V**^ 
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477: 
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' 

INCOME 

Hf-FUND'.' 

"-w</     /^^  ^ 

ENGLISH  MEN   OF   LETTERS 
EDITED   BT  JOHN  MORLET 

WILLIAM  HAZLITT 


ENGLISH  MEN  OF   LETTERS 

• 

WILLIAM     HAZLITT 

*  * 

BY 

AUGUSTINE    BIRRELL 


A  marf  s  life  is  his  whole  life,  not  the 
last  glimmering  snuff  of  the  candle  ' ' 


tt*< 


*(V^ 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
1902 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYBIGHT,  1902, 

BT  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped  June,  igo». 


^«* 


Nortoooti 
J.  8.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  MMB.  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

THE  chief  authorities  for  this  Life  of  Hazlitt  are  the 
following :  — 

(1)  Hazlitt's  own  books. 

(2)  Literary  Remains  of  the  late   William  Hazlitt: 

With  a  Notice  of  his  Life  by  his  Son,  and 
Thoughts  on  his  Genius  and  Writings,  by 
E.  L.  Bulwer,  Esq.,  M.P.,  and  Mr.  Serjeant 
Talfourd.  In  two  volumes,  Saunders  and 
Ottley,  1836. 

(3)  Memoirs   of   William    Hazlitt,   by  W.   Carew 

Hazlitt  (grandson).  Two  volumes,  Richard 
Bentley,  1867.  This  book  is  cited  as  Life. 

(4)  Four  Generations  of  a  Literary  Family,  by  W. 

Carew  Hazlitt.  Two  volumes.  George  Ked- 
way,  1897.  This  book  is  cited  as  Hazlitt 
Memoirs. 

(5)  Lamb  and  Hazlitt.    Edited  by  W.  Carew  Haz- 

litt.    Elkin  Matthews,  1900. 

(6)  List  of  the  Writings  of  William  Hazlitt  and 

Leigh  Hunt,  chronologically  arranged  and 
with  notes,  by  Alexander  Ireland.  John 
Eussell  Smith,  1868. 

v 


Yi  PREFACE 

(7)  William  Hazlitt,  Essayist  and   Critic.      With 

Memoir  by  Alexander  Ireland.      Frederick 
Warne  and  Co.,  1889. 

(8)  A  privately  printed  edition  of  the  Liber  Amoris, 

containing  Mrs.  Hazlitt's  Journal  of  my  Trip 
to  Scotland.     1894. 

With  regard  to  (3),  (4),  and  (5),  I  have  to  thank 
Hazlitt's  grandson,  Mr.  W.  Carew  Hazlitt,  for  his 
permission,  most  cordially  ^extended  to  me,  to  make 
such  use  as  I  have  done  of  these  authorities.  With- 
out that  permission  I  should  not  have  felt  at  ease  in 
handling  the  valuable  materials  they  contain. 


A.  B. 


3  NEW  SQUARE,  LINCOLN'S  INN, 
November  23, 1901. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEK  I 

PAGE 

PARENTAGE  —  BIRTH  —  AND    THE    UNITED    STATES    OP 

AMERICA 1 

CHAPTER  II 
WEM 17 

CHAPTER  III 
COLERIDGE 38 

CHAPTER  IV 
THE  LOUVRE 66 

CHAPTER  V 
FIRST  BOOKS,  MARRIAGE,  AND  LONDON    ....       73 

CHAPTER  VI 
THE  BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE 95 

CHAPTER  VII 

LIFE  AND  LECTURES  ........     115 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VIII 

PAGE 

QUARRELS,  ESSAYS,  DELUSIONS,  AND  PICTURE  GALLERIES    143 

CHAPTER  IX 
MAXIMS,  TRAVELS,  AND  THB  SPIRIT  OF  TBS  Aas     .          .    181 

CHAPTER  X 
THE  END  OF  STRIFE 206 

CHAPTER  XI 
CHARACTER  AND  GENIUS 226 


WILLIAM  HAZLirr 


WILLIAM  HAZLITT 


CHAPTER  I 

PARENTAGE  —  BIKTH  —  AND    THE    UNITED    STATES    OF 
AMEKICA 

IT  was  the  belief  of  Hazlitt's  son,  an  amiable  and  ac- 
complished Registrar  of  the  old  Court  of  Bankruptcy, 
that  the  name  his  father  made  illustrious  was  of  Dutch 
origin,  and  originally  spelt  Haesluyt.  The  diligent 
researches  of  the  grandson,  Mr.  W.  Carew  Hazlitt, 
would  not,  however,  justify  the  most  conscientious  of 
biographers  in  crossing  a  stormy  sea  to  explore  the 
ancient  burying  places  of  Haarlem  and  Leyden  in 
search  of  the  progenitors  of  the  writer  and  critic 
whose  passage  through  life  has  here  to  be  shortly 
recorded. 

Cross  the  sea,  however,  that  biographer  must,  but 
with  his  face  turned  to  the  west ;  for  it  is  in  a  lone 
churchyard  in  the  county  of  Tipperary  that  the  bones 
lie  of  John  Hazlitt  and  Margaret  his  wife,  the  grand- 
parents of  the  famous  writer,  and  farther  back  one 
cannot  safely  go. 

Tradition  tells  us  of  Hazlitts,  or  Hasletts,  or  even 
it  may  be  of  Haesluyts,  who  shortly  after  the  days 
of  Dutch  William  were  to  be  found  in  Antrim  and 
Coleraine  and  other  northern  parts  of  Ireland,  pur- 

B  1 


2  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

suing  various  vocations,  and  adhering  to  the  dominant 
Protestant  religion,  though  affecting  the  Presbyterian 
colour.  Whether  these  possible  ancestors  were  "  the 
noble,  silent  men  "  about  whom  Carlyle,  that  prince  of 
biographers,  loved  to  discourse  in  his  early  chapters, 
"scattered  here  and  there,  each  in  his  department 
silently  thinking,  silently  working,"  or  the  most  arrant 
chatterboxes  in  all  Ireland,  nobody  now  knows.  For 
us,  at  all  events,  they  are  as  silent  as  even  Carlyle 
could  wish. 

Some  time,  however,  and  1735  is  a  likely  date,  John 
Hazlitt,  a  flax  factor,  left  Antrim ;  and  in  the  company 
of  one  John  Darner,  who  grew  rich,  and  upon  whose 
fortune  a  nephew  maintained  an  earldom,  came  south 
and  established  himself  in  business  at  Shronell,  or 
Shrone-hill,  in  county  Tipperary,  near  the  town  of  the 
same  name.  John  Hazlitt  probably  brought  his  wife 
Margaret  with  him;  and  on  the  18th  of  April  1737 
his  eldest  son  was  born  at  Shronell  and  baptized, 
according  to  the  Presbyterian  ritual,  William.  This 
William  Hazlitt  it  was  who  in  due  time  became  the 
father  of  another  William  Hazlitt  who  has  made  the 
name  familiar  to  our  ears. 

There  were  two  other  sons  born  to  John  and 
Margaret  of  Shronell  —  James  and  John.  John 
emigrated  to  America  in  colonial  days,  but  became 
on  the  first  opportunity  a  rebel ;  and,  distinguishing 
himself  as  a  soldier,  died  a  colonel  and  a  citizen  of 
the  United  States.  This  Colonel  John  Hazlitt  must 
not  be  confused  with  another  warrior  of  the  same 
name  and  rank,  who  also  took  arms  against  King 
George,  and  died  at  the  head  of  his  regiment  on  the 
field  of  Preston,  1777.  This  second  Colonel  John 


i.]  PARENTAGE  3 

Hazlitt  belonged  to  the  Coleraine  branch,  and  was 
accounted  a  cousin. 

William  Hazlitt  the  Elder,  as  I  will  usually  call  him 
by  way  of  identification,  remained  in  Ireland  till  his 
nineteenth  year,  when  he  went  to  the  University  of 
Glasgow,  where,  says  his  great-grandson,  he  had  the 
good  fortune  to  be  contemporary  with  Adam  Smith. 
Nothing  is  known  now  of  William's  university  career 
except  that  he  attended  Professor  Clow's  Logic  Class, 
and  gave  great  satisfaction  to  Dr.  Moor,  the  then 
Professor  of  Greek.  He  proceeded  Artium  Magister  in 
due  course.  His  younger  brother  James  followed  him 
to  Glasgow,  where  he  also  graduated.  The  descend- 
ants of  James  are  still  living  in  Tipperary. 

William  the  Elder's  university  education  being  com- 
pleted in  or  about  1761,  it  became  necessary  for  him 
to  choose  a  vocation  in  life.  This  choice  presented  no 
difficulty.  He  belonged  by  the  grace  of  God  to  the 
great  and  happy  race  of  Parson  Adams,  whom  he 
much  resembled  save  in  the  accident  of  orthodoxy. 
When  and  how  the  elder  Hazlitt  became  a  Unitarian 
I  have  not  learned.  It  may  be  that  his  mother,  a 
thoughtful  woman,  who  rejoiced  that  her  firstborn 
should  be  a  divine,  had  imbibed  the  subtle  Arian 
heresy  and  transmitted  it  in  a  fiercer  form  to  Professor 
Clow's  pupil.  A  Unitarian,  however,  the  elder  Hazlitt 
became,  being  examined  before  he  entered  the  ministry, 
and  certified  sound,  by  three  eminent  doctors  of  that 
faith  —  Dr.  Price,  Dr.  Chandler,  and  Dr.  Prior  —  all  of 
whom  he  excelled  in  primitive  fervour,  republican  zeal, 
and  Hebraistical  piety. 

If  ever  a  man  scorned  this  world  and  the  things 
belonging  to  it,  William  Hazlitt  the  Elder  was  that 


4  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

man ;  for  in  the  pure  white  flame  of  his  enthusiasm 
every  shabby  ambition,  every  mean  and  paltry  aim, 
were  shrivelled  up  before  they  had  time  to  flutter. 
The  impression  he  left  upon  his  son,  a  born  Epicurean 
in  temperament,  though  not  in  philosophy,  was  tre- 
mendous, and  is  happily  recorded  in  more  than  one 
passage  of  resounding  vocables  and  true  inspiration. 
I  must  but  lightly  pass  over  the  adventures  and 
characteristics  of  this  fine  old  Nonconformist,  but  to 
ignore  them  altogether  would  be  wrong ;  for  they  had 
a  great  share  in  making  the  Hazlitt  I  am  most  con- 
cerned with  what  he  was  as  a  writer,  if  not  what  he 
was  as  a  man. 

The  history  of  the  English  Presbyterians  during  the 
eighteenth  century  and  their  lapse  into  Arianism  and 
Unitarianism  is  well  known.  It  has  been  elucidated 
in  the  Court  of  Chancery,  and  expounded  by  Macaulay 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  Small  endowments  kept 
tiny  congregations  together  despite  the  unpopularity 
of  their  tenets ;  their  country  ministers  were  frequently 
men  of  piety  and  learning,  and  usually  imbued  with  a 
love  of  individual  freedom  and  independent  thought. 
They  were  almost  always  apostolically  poor.  During 
the  bad  times,  when  the  eighteenth  century  came  to 
an  end,  and  the  last  century  so  heavily  drew  its  early 
breath,  the  Unitarians  were  wholly  an  influence  for 
good. 

The  elder  Hazlitt's  first  congregation  was  at  Wis- 
beach,  in  the  Isle  of  Ely,  where  he  went  in  1764, 
and  remained  two  years.  Wisbeach  was,  and  indeed 
is,  a  great  place  for  Dissent.  You  may  read  of  it  in 
De  Foe,  the  first  political  Dissenter.  The  Godwins, 
though  originally  from  Yorkshire,  were  long  settled  in 


i.]  PARENTAGE  5 

Wisbeach,  and  the  father  of  that  grimy  Gamaliel,  the 
author  of  the  Political  Justice,  was  a  predecessor  of 
Hazlitt's  at  the  Meeting  House.  The  old  Dissenting 
families  of  the  neighbourhood  cherished  many  stir- 
ring memories  of  persecution,  toleration,  and  reaction ; 
but  of  their  own  bigotry,  when  predominant,  not  a 
tradition  was  to  be  found,  so  much  easier  is  it  to 
remember  your  heroism  under  misfortune  than  your 
pride  in  place. 

Out  of  one  of  these  families  the  elder  Hazlitt  took 
a  wife  —  Grace  Loftus,  whose  father  was  an  iron- 
monger in  the  market-place.  The  ironmonger  had 
married  an  Oxfordshire  lady,  Grace  Pentlow,  who, 
though  she  was  eleven  years  old  when  Queen  Anne 
died,  and  remembered  the  news  coming  on  a  Sunday 
morning,  and  how  greatly  the  Dissenters  rejoiced  as 
they  repaired  to  the  conventicles  that  had  been  threat- 
ened with  compulsory  closing,  yet  lived  to  the  year 
1801. 

William  Hazlitt  and  Grace  Loftus  were  married  on 
the  19th  of  January  1766  at  Peterborough,  in  a  parish 
church,  which,  unlike  the  Quakers,  they  were  content 
to  enter  in  order  to  preserve  their  children  from  the 
taint  of  bastardy.  Grace  Hazlitt,  who,  like  her 
mother,  lived  to  a  great  age,  had  many  charms,  and 
was  reckoned  very  good-looking,  though  her  marked 
resemblance  in  nose  and  lip  to  the  younger  Pitt  is  not 
by  itself  recommendatory  of  her  person,  and  must 
have  been  a  great  trial  to  her  son. 

After  his  marriage,  the  elder  Hazlitt  and  his  young 
wife  —  she  was  twenty-two  —  moved  to  Marshfield,  in 
Gloucestershire,  where  he  ministered  to  the  needs  of 
a  small  number  of  heretical  maltsters,  and  here  his 


6  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

eldest  son  John  (the  painter)  was  born,  as  also  was  a 
boy  Loftus,  who  died  in  early  days. 

In  1770  Hazlitt  the  Elder  came  to  Maidstone,  where 
he  was  minister  of  the  Earle  Street  Meeting  House,  a 
somewhat  important  place  in  the  small  community  to 
which  he  was  proud  to  belong.  Here  he  made  friends, 
some  of  celebrity,  such  as  Dr.  Priestley,  Dr.  Kippis, 
and  even  Benjamin  Franklin ;  but  the  elder  Hazlitt, 
like  his  son,  had  no  gifts  for  the  great,  and  chose  his 
companions  for  no  better  reason  than  because  he  en- 
joyed their  society.  His  great  cronies  at  Maidstone 
were  Mr.  Wiche,  the  Baptist  minister,  and  Mr.  Viny 
of  Tenterden,  at  whose  house  it  was  he  used  to  meet 
Franklin.  Viny  was  Pro-English,  and  Hazlitt  Pro- 
American,  so  there  was  no  lack  of  conversation,  which 
cannot  have  failed  to  be  animated. 

At  Maidstone,  on  the  10th  of  April  1778,  in  a  house 
no  longer  recognisable,  in  a  lane  once  called  Mitre, 
and  now  Bullock,  William  Hazlitt  was  born.  On 
the  21st  of  June  he  was  baptized  by  his  father  in 
the  Meeting  House ;  but,  as  he  once  said  in  words, 
the  deep  significance  of  which  penetrate  to  the  very 
core  of  his  being,  "  I  started  in  life  with  the  French 
Revolution,"  and  certainly  there  were  always  more 
traces  of  the  Revolution  about  Hazlitt  than  of  the 
rite  of  Christian  Baptism. 

Seven  years  earlier,  but  also  at  Maidstone,  another 
child  had  been  born,  and  a  very  useful  member  of  the 
family  she  proved  to  be  —  Margaret,  commonly  called 
Peggy,  whose  family  diary,  copious  extracts  from 
which  were  published  for  the  first  time  in  the  Hazlitt 
Memoirs  (1897),  is  full  of  interest. 

The  travels  and  adventures  of  William  Hazlitt  the 


i.]  UNITED   STATES  OF  AMERICA  7 

Younger  began  early ;  for  in  1780  his  father,  in  con- 
sequence of  one  of  those  congregational  quarrels  which 
are  the  weakness  of  Independency,  had  to  leave  Maid- 
stone.  He  returned  to  Ireland,  taking  his  family  with 
him,  and  for  three  years  abode  at  Bandon,  near  Cork, 
where,  ever  active  in  the  cause  of  Humanity,  and 
never  averse  to  being  in  a  hopeless  minority,  he 
pleaded  with  courage  and  success  the  cause  of  a  num- 
ber of  American  rebels  who  were  exposed  to  great 
hardships,  and  even  wanton  cruelty,  at  Kinsale 
Prison. 

These  courageous  and  disinterested  efforts  made 
Bandon  an  uncomfortable  place  for  a  man  with  a 
young  family ;  and  the  elder  Hazlitt  in  1783,  and  in 
the  face  of  strong  advice  to  the  contrary,  given  him 
by  Dr.  Price,  who  had,  at  Hazlitt's  instigation,  sought 
Lord  Shelburne's  assistance  in  the  case  of  the  Kinsale 
prisoners,  made  up  his  mind  to  emigrate  to  America, 
with  whom  a  treaty  of  peace  was  about  to  be  con- 
cluded. Accordingly,  on  the  3rd  of  April  1783,  the 
elder  Hazlitt ;  his  wife  Grace  Hazlitt ;  his  son  John, 
then  fifteen ;  his  daughter  Margaret,  aged  twelve ; 
William,  just  entering  upon  his  sixth  year ;  and  a 
little  Harriet,  born  in  Bandon,  all  sailed  from  Cork, 
on  board  the  Henry  bound  for  New  York,  hoping  to 
find  in  the  new  Republic  about  to  rise,  as  Peggy  the 
diarist  expresses  it,  "  a  perfect  land  where  no  tyrants 
were  to  rule,  no  bigots  to  hate  and  persecute  their 
brethren,  no  intrigues  to  feed  the  flame  of  discord  and 
fill  the  land  with  woe." 

Paradise  was  farther  off  in  those  days  than  it  is 
now,  for  it  was  not  until  May  the  12th,  seven  good 
weeks,  that  the  Henry  sighted  Long  Island. 


8  WILLIAM   IIAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Hazlitt  was  thus  destined  to  see  New  York  before 
ever  he  set  eyes  on  London.  He  is  so  essentially  a 
child  of  the  old  world  —  of  old  plays,  old  books,  old 
pictures,  and  old  prejudices  —  that  it  is  hard  to  think 
of  him  as  living  in  a  brand-new  Republic  across  the 
.  Atlantic,  as  yet  unenriched  with  any  of  the  spoils  of 
time. 

The  United  States  were  not,  however,  to  be  more 
than  an  episode  in  the  lives  of  the  Hazlitts ;  and 
within  little  more  than  four  years  all  of  them,  save 
little  Harriet,  who  did  not  bear  transplanting,  and  an 
Esther  born^in  the  States,  who  did  not  live  to  come 
home,  were  jiack  again  in  benighted  old  England. 

The  scenery  of  the  States  did  not  make  the  impres- 
sion one  would  expect  upon  the  young  William. 
From  five  to  nine  are  usually  impressionable  years ; 
and  Hazlitt,  above  most  men,  made  good  play  with  all 
his  impressions  on  paper.  The  diary  of  his  sister  is 
full  of  the  trees  and  birds  and  landscape ;  but  in 
Hazlitt's  writings  nothing  of  America  remains  but, 
little  epicure  that  he  was,  the  taste  of  barberries  — 
that  taste,  he  wrote,  "  I  have  in  my  mouth  still  after 
an  interval  of  more  than  thirty  years,  for  I  have  met 
no  other  taste  in  all  that  time  at  all  like  it."  Perhaps 
Hazlitt's  enthusiasms  required  the  stimulus  of  a  book 
in  his  hand  or  a  picture  on  the  wall.  However  this 
may  be,  these  enthusiasms  were  kept  virginal  for  the 
old  world,  for  Rousseau,  for  Titian,  for  Mrs.  Siddons, 
and  for  the  range  of  lofty  hills  seen  from  Wem  in 
pleasant  Salop. 

The  adventures  of  a  wandering  Parson  Adams  of 
the  Unitarian  persuasion  and  his  family  in  those  new 
States,  whither  the  very  ship  that  brought  them  also 


i.]  UNITED  STATES  OF    AMEKICA  9 

brought  the  first  news  of  the  peace  with  the  old  and 
defeated  country,  as  narrated  in  the  diary  of  the  eldest 
daughter,  are  full  of  movement  and  almost  romantic 
interest ;  but  they  are  not  sufficiently  relevant  to  the 
main  issue  of  this  little  book  to  justify  more  than  a 
reference.  The  diary  might  advantageously  be  edited 
and  published  as  a  whole. 

The  arrival  of  the  Hazlitts  in  New  York  created 
great  excitement,  for  the  reason  already  given.  "  As 
soon  as  we  cast  anchor,"  records  the  diarist,  "  we 
were  visited  by  some  of  the  British  officers,  who  came 
on  board  eager  to  hear  the  news.  Ours  was  the  first 
ship  that  brought  an  account  of  the  treaty  of  peace. 
And  then  how  they  raved  and  swore,  cursing  both  the 
Congress  and  those  at  home  who  had  thus  put  a  stop 
to  their  ravaging  with  fire  and  sword  their  brothers' 
land ;  and  in  this  our  most  valiant  captain  most 
piously  joined,  so  much  were  their  American  brethren 
transformed  in  their  eyes  (by  that  little,  magical 
word  rebel)  into  bands  of  lawless  banditti  whom  it 
would  be  meritorious  to  destroy." 

The  family  remained  in  New  York  but  two  days, 
and  then  started  for  Philadelphia,  resting  by  the  way 
at  Burlington,  where  on  Sunday  Mr.  Hazlitt,  "by 
special  request,"  preached  before  the  New  Jersey 
Assembly  then  in  sitting,  his  first  sermon  on  American 
soil.  It  sounds  very  grand,  but  the  service  was  con- 
ducted in  a  small  room  with  only  benches  to  sit  upon. 
Mrs.  Hazlitt  would  have  liked  to  have  remained  at 
Burlington,  and  to  have  opened  a  school  there,  a  likely 
project  which  might  have  made  an  American  of 
William  Hazlitt,  but  the  Divine  had  other  aims  than 
school-mastering,  and  insisted  upon  pushing  on  to  Phil- 


10  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

adelphia.  To  this  fair  city,  excellently  well  described 
in  Peggy's  diary,  the  family  journeyed  in  a  stage- 
waggon,  driving  for  two  days  through  the  New  Jersey 
woods,  "  full  of  majestic  trees  mingled  with  the  blos- 
soms of  the  wild  peach  and  apricot,  and  the  sweet- 
scented  yellow  flowers  of  the  locust-trees  perfuming 
the  air." 

In  Philadelphia  the  Hazlitts  remained  fifteen 
months,  having  hired  a  house  in  Union  Street,  for 
which  they  paid  £30  a  year  in  English  money.  Im- 
mediately on  arrival  the  elder  Hazlitt  and  his  son 
John  hurried  off  to  St.  Peter's  Church,  not  to  return 
thanks  for  their  safe  arrival  in  the  Land  of  Freedom, 
but  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  Freedom's  hero,  General 
Washington,  who  was  attending  church  on  some  public 
occasion. 

They  met  in  the  neighbourhood  other  Hazlitts  from 
Coleraine,  and  heard  about  the  Colonel  John,  of  whom 
mention  has  already  been  made. 

The  elder  Hazlitt  during  his  stay  in  Philadelphia 
preached  assiduously  in  such  pulpits  as  were  open  to 
him,  but  in  the  matter  of  Unitarianism  the  States 
were  not  yet  the  Land  of  Freedom.  Calvinistic  ortho- 
doxy was  still  installed  in  Church  and  College ;  and 
Subscription,  the  bondage  of  the  spirit,  was  as  much 
the  fashion  as  in  the  old  country.  The  presidency  of 
a  college  at  Carlisle,  with  a  stipend  of  £300  a  year, 
was  offered  Hazlitt,  but  on  those  terms  of  slavery. 
His  reply  was  that  he  would  sooner  die  in  a  ditch 
than  submit  to  human  authority  in  matters  of  faith. 
The  language  is  familiar,  but  Hazlitt  meant  what  he 
said.  He  had  therefore  to  be  content  with  the  life  of 
a  wandering  preacher  and  lecturer  on  the  Evidences 


i.]  UNITED   STATES  OF  AMERICA  11 

X 

of  Christianity,  going  wherever  he  was  invited.  On 
some  of  these  occasions  his  little  son  William  accom- 
panied him  even  into  the  pulpit  itself,  where  he  would 
sit  on  a  cushion  at  his  father's  feet,  hid  from  sight, 
pursuing  his  own  wandering  thoughts,  whilst  far  above 
his  head  he  heard  the  familiar  and  beloved  paternal 
voice  unfolding  and  recounting  his  "  dream  of  infinity 
and  eternity,  of  death,  the  resurrection,  and  judgment 
to  come." 

To  Boston  indeed  the  elder  Hazlitt  almost  received 
"  a  call."  It  seemed  a  settled  thing,  but  it  was  not  to 
be.  "  The  persecuting  zeal  of  the  orthodox  sent  one 
of  their  chosen  brethren  after  him,  and  thus  put  a 
stop  to  his  settling  there."  The  fact  is,  Hazlitt  was 
a  pioneer.  He  was  perhaps  the  first  professed  Uni- 
tarian in  the  States  which  had  not  yet  been  visited 
and  organised  by  Priestley.  Unitarianism  was  to  have 
its  day  in  Boston,  and  to  rule  supreme  at  Harvard ; 
but  its  day  had  not  then  arrived,  and  is  now  over, 
for  I  am  given  to  understand  that  "  a  mild  Episco- 
palianism"  is  the  mode  of  religion  found  easiest  of 
assimilation  by  the  present  inhabitants  of  Boston. 

In  August  1774  the  Hazlitts  left  Philadelphia  for  a 
beautiful  home  in  Wey mouth,  some  fifteen  miles  from 
Boston. 

"The  house,"  so  the  diarist  tells  us,  "stood  in  a 
most  romantic  spot,  surrounded  on  three  sides  by  very 
steep  hills  that  sloped  down  just  in  sight  of  the  win- 
dows, and  were  covered  with  locust-trees. 

"  These  trees  grow  to  a  great  height,  and  their  yellow 
blossoms,  somewhat  like  the  laburnum,  perfumed  the 
air  in  spring.  On  the  green  before  the  door  stood  a 
solitary  pear-tree,  beyond  the  shade  of  which  in  the 


12  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

hot  days  William  was  not  allowed  to  go  until  four 
o'clock,  when  the  sun  was  in  some  sort  shaded  by  the 
neighbouring  hills.  On  the  pales  that  enclosed  this 
sloping  green  the  woodpeckers  were  wont  to  sit,  and 
make  a  noise  with  their  bills  like  a  saw.  Beyond  the 
garden  and  lane  was  a  large  meadow,  which  in  the 
summer  evenings,  with  its  myriads  of  fire-flies,  made 
a  brilliant  appearance. 

"  On  a  little  low  hill  to  the  eastward  stood  the  house 
of  prayer,  and  below  it  Dr.  Tuft's,  the  road  to  Boston 
passing  close  by  them;  to  the  north  King-Oak  Hill, 
which  in  the  winter,  when  covered  with  snow,  reflected 
the  golden  and  purple  tints  of  the  setting  sun.  Over 
this  hill  the  road  leading  to  Hingham  was  seen.  .  .  . 
The  hills  behind  the  house  are  very  steep,  and  it  was 
one  of  our  childish  exploits,  when  they  were  covered 
with  ice,  to  climb  up  and  write  our  names  on  the 
frozen  snow. 

"  From  the  top  of  these  hills  we  had  a  distant  view 
of  the  Bay  of  Boston,  and  many  of  its  islands  and 
hills  beyond  it,  with  Dorchester  heights,  famous  for 
the  Battle  of  Kegs;  Bunker's  Hill,  where  so  many 
British  officers  fell  in  the  space  of  five  minutes,  singled 
out  by  the  sharpshooters  of  the  Yankees ;  to  the  south, 
dark  and  frowning  woods,  and  nearer  to  us  the  river, 
with  a  mill  and  two  houses  on  its  banks,  and  a  variety 
of  meadows,  fields,  and  trees  below.  Here  also  was 
seen  the  house  of  Captain  Whitman,  a  good  friend  of 
ours.  He  was  so  fond  of  William  that  the  boy  spent 
half  his  time  in  going  with  him  to  the  woods,  or  to  the 
fields  to  see  them  plough,  or  attending  the  milking  of 
the  cows,  where  I,  too,  was  often  present.  .  .  ." 

A   pleasant  exterior,   surely   enough.      Inside  the 


i.]  UNITED   STATES   OF  AMERICA  13 

house  "was  a  very  large  picture  in  oil  of  the  meet- 
ing of  Esau  and  Jacob.  The  embracing  of  the  two 
brothers,  the  meeting  of  their  followers  on  either  side, 
with  the  groups  of  camels  and  other  cattle,  and  the 
background  wending  up  between  the  hills  and  seeming 
to  vanish  in  the  air  completed  the  enchantment.  On 
this  picture  I  used  to  gaze  with  delight."  So  writes 
Peggy. 

The  picture  was  one  of  the  early  works  of  Copley, 
and  though  John  Hazlitt,  a  bit  of  a  painter  himself 
by  this  time,  affected  to  think  little  of  it,  one  cannot 
doubt  that  the  young  William  shared  his  sister's 
rapture,  for  "  The  Meeting  of  Esau  and  Jacob  "  must 
have  been  the  first  real  canvas  on  which  rested  his 
devouring  eye.  It  is  strange  he  should  never  have 
mentioned  it.  In  Peggy's  account  it  is  pleasant  to 
recognise  the  family  gusto,  for  she  describes  her  one 
dull  Copley  with  something  of  the  same  feeling  that 
her  little  brother  was  in  days  to  come  to  write  of 
"  that  cold  convent  spire  rising  in  the  distance,  amidst 
the  blue  sapphire  mountains  and  the  golden  sky "  of 
Titian's  St.  Peter  Martyr,  now,  alas !  no  longer  to  be 
seen,  and  of  many  another  famous  picture  in  London, 
Paris,  Florence,  and  Home. 

Long  walks  were  things  of  necessity  at  Weymouth. 
Hingham,  where  the  elder  Hazlitt  often  preached,  was 
five  miles  off.  "  How  often,"  says  the  diarist,  "  have 
we  stood  at  the  window  looking  at  my  father  as  he 
went  up  the  Hingham  road  with  William  in  his  nan- 
keen dress  marching  by  his  side  like  one  that  could 
never  be  tired."  Thus  early  was  the  boy  initiated 
into  the  charm  of  the  road!  A  great  pedestrian  he 
remained  all  his  life.  He  envied  no  man  his  travelling- 


14  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

chariot.  "  Give  me  the  clear  blue  sky  over  my  head, 
and  the  green  turf  beneath  my  feet,  a  winding  road 
before  me  and  a  three  hours'  march  to  dinner,  and 
then  to  thinking.  It  is  hard  if  I  cannot  start  some 
game  on  these  lone  heaths.  I  laugh,  I  run,  I  leap,  I 
sing  for  joy." 

A  man's  life  is  his  whole  life,  and  it  was  memories 
like  these  of  joyful,  exultant  existence  that  must  have 
prompted  the  last  words  Hazlitt  ever  uttered  after 
living  the  life  I  have  to  record,  "  Well  —  I  have  had  a 
happy  life." 

Boston  was  beyond  the  six-year-old  legs  of  William, 
but  the  elder  Hazlitt  and  John  thought  nothing  of  a 
walk  there  and  back,  to  preach  or  lecture,  or  see  a 
Unitarian  tract  through  the  press.  At  Hingham,  old 
Mr.  Ebenezer  Gay  was  minister,  and  there  were  those 
of  his  congregation  who  thought  he  might  at  ninety 
years  of  age  retire,  and  make  way  for  Mr.  Hazlitt ; 
but  Mr.  Gay,  who  was  "  a  very  pleasant  old  man,"  and 
"  fond  of  a  good  story,"  did  not  share  this  view,  though 
always  glad  to  let  his  young  brother  preach  for  him 
whenever  so  minded.  No  settlement  could  be  found. 
In  the  summer  of  1785  Hazlitt  tried  Cape  Cod,  "  a 
neat  little  town,  established  chiefly  by  fishermen,  and 
nothing  to  be  seen  but  rucks  and  sands  and  the  bound- 
less ocean."  William  was  taken  to  Cape  Cod,  and 
on  arriving  he  inquired  whether  any  robins  or  Bob 
Lincolns  came  there,  and  on  being  told  No,  replied, 
"  I  suppose  they  do  not  like  so  ugly  a  place,"  which 
was  a  little  hard  on  Cape  Cod. 

Romantic  Wey mouth  was  given  up  after  a  year  and 
eight  months,  when  the  family  found  it  convenient  to 
live  nearer  to  Boston.  Upper  Dorchester  was  their 


i.]  LONDON  15 

new  home,  five  miles  from  Boston  —  in  a  small  house 
on  the  high  road.  Hazlitt  continued  to  preach  as 
before  in  Boston,  Salem,  Hingham,  and  other  places, 
but  at  last  in  despair  he  determined  to  go  back  home, 
which  he  did  by  himself,  sailing  from  Boston  in 
October  1786.  He  had  not  long  been  gone  when  old 
Mr.  Gay  died,  and  the  Meeting  House  at  Hingham 
might  have  been  his.  The  diarist  mourns  over  the 
mischance,  and  whatever  might  have  been  her  brothers' 
lot,  there  can,  I  think,  be  little  doubt  that  her  life 
would  have  been  a  happier  one  had  she  remained  in 
New  England. 

After  the  elder  Hazlitt's  departure,  his  family  re- 
mained at  Dorchester  for  eight  months,  John  studying 
painting  as  best  he  could,  and  teaching  William,  who 
worked  like  a  fury,  his  Latin  Grammar.  Mrs.  Hazlitt, 
wherever  she  went,  was  a  great  favourite,  and  they 
had  many  friends  in  Boston  and  its  neighbourhood. 
On  July  4,  1787,  "  the  grand  anniversary  of  American 
Independence,"  this  small  family  of  baffled  Radicals 
sailed  home,  disembarking  at  Portsmouth  on  the  12th 
of  August.  The  stage-coach  took  them  to  London, 
where  they  were  joyfully  received.  After  this  fashion 
did  William  Hazlitt  reach  London. 

The  earliest  composition  of  Hazlitt's  that  has  sur- 
vived is  a  letter  to  his  father  in  London,  evidently 
written  from  Dorchester.  Letters  of  Hazlitt's  are 
great  rarities,  and  his  first  must  be  given  at  length. 
His  many  friends  in  America  will  find  it  easy  to  for- 
give. 

"12th  of  Nov. 

"  MY  DEAR  PAPA,  —  I  shall  never  forget  that  we  came  to 
america.  If  we  had  not  carne  to  america,  we  should  not 


16  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP.  i. 

have  been  away  from  one  and  other,  though  now  it  can  not  be 
helped.  I  think  for  my  part  that  it  would  have  been  a  great 
deal  better  if  the  white  people  had  not  found  it  out.  Let 
the  (others)  have  it  for  themselves,  for  it  was  made  for 
them.  I  have  got  a  little  of  my  grammar ;  sometimes  I  get 
three  pages  and  sometimes  but  one.  I  do  not  sifer  any  at 
all.  Mamma  Peggy  and  Jacky  are  all  very  well,  and  I  am 
to.  —  I  still  remain  your  most  Affectionate  Son, 

"  WILLIAM  HAZLITT. 
"  The  Rev.  Mr.  HAZLITT,  London. 

"  To  the  care  of  Mr.  DAVID  LEWIS." 


CHAPTEE  II 

WEM 

THE  elder  Hazlitt  had  spent  the  eight  months  between 
his  own  return  home  and  that  of  his  family  in  London 
in  the  house  of  Mr.  David  Lewis,  a  member  of  a  Maid- 
stone  family,  to  whom  the  Hazlitts  were  indebted  for 
much  of  that  kindness  which,  when  it  happens  to  be 
accompanied  by  delicacy,  has  often  sweetened  the  hard 
lot  of  those  who  insist  upon  thinking  for  themselves 
in  things  spiritual.  These  hospitable  folk  received 
the  whole  family  on  its  arrival  from  Portsmouth,  and 
entertained  it  for  some  weeks,  until  a  lodging  was 
taken  at  Walworth  near  the  once-celebrated  Mont- 
pelier  Tea  Gardens.  To  this  cheerful  resort  his 
friendly  and  companionable  father  used  to  take  for  a 
ramble  the  future  essayist,  who  has  painted  for  us  the 
very  place. 

"When  I  was  quite  a  boy,  my  father  used  to  take 
me  to  the  Montpelier  Tea-gardens  at  Walworth.  Do 
I  go  there  now  ?  No  :  the  place  is  deserted,  and  its 
borders  and  its  beds  o'erturned.  Is  there,  then, 
nothing  that  can 

'  Bring  back  the  hour 
Of  glory  in  the  grass,  of  splendour  in  the  flower '  ? 

Oh  yes.     I  unlock  the  casket  of  memory,  and  draw 
back  the  warders  of  the  brain  ;  and  there  this  scene 
c  17 


18  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

of  my  infant  wanderings  still  lives  unfaded,  or  with 
fresher  dyes.  A  new  sense  comes  upon  me,  as  in  a 
dream ;  a  richer  perfume,  brighter  colours  start  out ; 
my  eyes  dazzle ;  my  heart  heaves  with  its  new  load  of 
bliss,  and  I  am  a  child  again.  My  sensations  are  all 
glossy,  spruce,  voluptuous,  and  fine;  they  wear  a 
candied  coat,  and  are  in  holiday  trim.  I  see  the  beds 
of  larkspur  with  purple  eyes ;  tall  hollyhocks,  red  and 
yellow ;  the  brown  sunflowers,  caked  in  gold,  with 
bees  buzzing  round  them ;  wildernesses  of  pinks  and 
hot-glowing  peonies ;  poppies  run  to  seed ;  the  sugared 
lily  and  faint  mignonette,  all  ranged  in  order,  and 
as  thick  as  they  can  grow ;  the  box-tree  borders ;  the 
gravel-walks,  the  painted  alcove,  the  confectionery, 
the  clotted  cream ;  —  I  think  I  see  them  now  with 
sparkling  looks,  or  have  they  vanished  while  I  have 
been  writing  this  description  of  them?  No  matter; 
they  will  return  again  when  I  least  think  of  them. 
All  that  I  have  observed  since,  of  flowers  and  plants, 
and  grass-plots,  and  of  suburb  delights,  seems,  to  me, 
borrowed  from  'that  first  garden  of  my  innocence,' 
to  be  slips  and  scions  stolen  from  that  bed  of  mem- 
ory." 1 

Another  lodging  in  Percy  Street  soon  received  them, 
and  here  they  stayed  through  the  whole  autumn  of 
1787,  receiving  a  visit  of  a  month's  duration  from  old 
Mrs.  Loftus  already  mentioned,  who,  though  then 
eighty-four,  had  still  fourteen  years  to  live.  John 
Hazlitt  obtained  admission  into  the  studios  of  the 
great  Sir  Joshua,  and  pursued  his  art  with  the  utmost 
zest.  Margaret  the  diarist  had  also  a  strong  artistic 

i'  Why  distant  objects  please.'—  Table-Talk. 


ii.]  WEM  19 

bent ;  and  whenever  she  could  manage  it,  William  and 
she  would  flatten  their  noses  against  the  windows  of 
the  print  shops  in  Pall  Mall,  and  great  was  her  rapture 
when  her  father  actually  took  her  into  Boydell's 
Gallery  and  bought  a  print  —  "The  Fish-stealers  by 
Moonlight." 

The  wanderings  of  the  elder  Hazlitt  were  now, 
however,  nearly  at  an  end.  In  the  winter  of  1787  he 
accepted  the  charge  of  a  small  congregation  at  Wem, 
in  Shropshire,  and  at  Wem  he  remained  for  more  than 
a  quarter  of  a  century. 

Wem  is  a  well-known  name  to  all  Hazlitt's  readers. 
Wem,  in  Shropshire,  and  Winterslow  Hutt,  by  Salis- 
bury Plain,  were  two  places  of  joy  in  his  self-torment- 
ing, self-rejoicing  life ;  and  so  well  has  he  succeeded  in 
infecting  them  with  his  own  delight,  that  it  is  hard  to 
be  dull  at  Wem  or  indifferent  at  Winterslow. 

At  Wem  Hazlitt  remained,  with  but  few  periods  of 
absence,  from  his  tenth  to  his  twenty-second  year, 
from  1788  to  1802  —  a  good  slice  out  of  life,  and 
when  impressions  cut  deepest,  and  indeed,  like  the 
mercy  of  God,  endure  for  ever.  Hazlitt,  like  Macau- 
lay,  was  a  most  tenacious  person,  though  the  tenacity 
of  the  latter  had  a  Whiggish  cast  differentiating  it  from 
the  tenacity  of  the  born  sentimentalist.  "  If  I  see  a 
row  of  cabbage-plants  or  of  peas  or  beans  coming  up,  I 
immediately  think  of  those  which  I  used  so  carefully 
to  water  of  an  evening  at  Wem  when  my  day's  task 
was  done,  and  of  the  pain  with  which  I  saw  them 
droop  and  hang  down  their  leaves  in  the  morning's 
sun."  Again,  "  I  never  see  a  child's  kite  but  it  seems 
to  pull  at  my  heart." 

At  Wem  William  became  in  a  very  real  sense  his 


20  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

father's  pupil,  though  he  must  also  have  attended  a 
day  school ;  for  in  a  long  letter  written  to  his  brother 
from  Wera  in  March  1788,  he  tells  John  that  he  goes 
to  school  at  nine  every  morning,  and  after  three  of 
the  boys  have  read  from  the  Bible,  he  and  two  others 
(is  this  an  early  Conscience  Clause  protecting  the 
young  Dissenter  ?)  showed  their  exercises.  After  this 
odd  distinction,  the  whole  class  read  Enfield's  Speaker. 
At  spelling  Hazlitt  asserts  he  was  almost  always  first. 
As  for  the  boys,  some  he  declares  are  so  sulky  that 
they  won't  play,  and  others  are  quarrelsome  because 
they  cannot  learn,  and  are  fit  only  for  fighting  like 
stupid  dogs  and  cats.  "  I  can  jump  four  yards  at  a 
running  jump  and  two  at  a  standing  jump.  I  intend 
to  try  you  at  this  when  you  come  down." 

This  same  letter  reveals  a  taste  both  for  drawing 
and  reading.  "  You  want  to  know  what  I  do :  I  am  a 
busybody,  and  do  many  silly  things.  I  drew  eyes 
and  noses  till  about  a  fortnight  ago.  I  have  drawn  a 
little  boy  since,  a  man's  face,  and  a  little  boy's  front- 
face  taken  from  a  bust.  Next  Monday  I  shall  begin 
to  read  Ovid's  Metamorphoses  and  Eutropius.  I  shall 
like  to  know  all  the  Latin  and  Greek  I  can.  I  want 
to  learn  how  to  measure  the  stars.  I  shall  not,  I  sup- 
pose, paint  the  worse  for  knowing  everything  else." 
The  letter  concludes  thus:  "I  don't  want  your  old 
clothes.  I  shall  go  to  dancing  this  month.  This  is  all 
I  can  say.  —  I  am,  your  affectionate  brother,  WILLIAM 
HAZLITT." 

Margaret's  account  of  him  at  this  time  is  as 
follows :  — 

"  The  first  six  years  subsequent  to  our  settlement  at  Wem 
he  devoted  to  study,  and  under  his  father's  guidance  he 


ii.]  WEM  21 

made  a  rapid  progress.  He  was  at  this  time  the  most 
active,  lively,  and  happiest  of  boys ;  his  time  divided  be- 
tween his  studies  and  his  childish  sports  passed  smoothly 
on.  Beloved  by  all  for  his  amiable  temper  and  manners, 
pleasing  above  his  years,  the  delight  and  pride  of  his  own 
family." 

The  slouch  in  the  gait  and  the  hand  fumbling  for 
the  hidden  dagger  were  things  of  another  birth,  even 
if  they  were  not,  like  the  pimples  with  which  Professor 
Wilson's  young  men  in  Blackwood  bespread  Hazlitt's 
face,  altogether  the  offspring  of  lurid  fancy. 

During  these  years  at  Wem  the  character  and  atti- 
tude of  mind  towards  both  spiritual  and  political 
affairs  of  the  elder  Hazlitt  made  a  great  impression  on 
the  imagination  of  the  son.  There  was  sympathy 
between  them.  The  original  bent  of  the  younger 
Hazlitt's  mind  was  towards  metaphysical  reflection, 
nor  had  he  any  inborn  distaste  for  theology,  or  even  to 
going  to  chapel  twice  on  Sundays.  In  the  politics  of 
the  day  he  naturally  took  a  keen  interest ;  and  could, 
when  ten  years  old,  give  the  arguments  for  the  Repeal 
of  the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts  as  well  as  any  living 
man  in  Parliament  or  pothouse.  The  father  rejoiced 
exceedingly  at  this  youthful  prowess,  and  with  "  for- 
ward-reaching thoughts  "  already  saw  the  boy  he  loved 
expounding  from  the  pulpit  with  fiery  eloquence  and 
convincing  force  the  principles  of  true  religion,  the 
charm  of  a  holy  life,  and  the  rights  of  man.  "  My 
father,"  said  Hazlitt,  "  would  far  sooner  I  had  preached 
a  good  sermon  than  painted  a  Rembrandt " ;  and  this, 
not  because  the  elder  Hazlitt  was  blind  to  the  sur- 
passing merit  of  Rembrandt,  but  because  to  him  a 
sermon  belonged  to  the  Life  Eternal. 


22  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

The  study  at  Wem  contained  much  massy  divinity. 
Caryl's  Commentaries  on  Job,  in  folio  volumes,  was 
amongst  the  lighter  reading  which  greatly  exercised 
the  young  Hazlitt's  imagination,  even  though  its 
perusal  did  not  occupy  much  of  his  time.  "It  is 
delightful  to  repose  on  the  Wisdom  of  the  Ancients ; 
to  travel  out  of  one's  self  into  the  Chaldee,  Hebrew, 
and  Egyptian  characters;  to  have  the  palm-trees 
waving  mystically  in  the  margin  of  the  page,  and  the 
camels  moving  slowly  on  in  the  distance  of  three 
thousand  years."  His  father  and  his  father's  books 
were  always  very  near  Hazlitt's  heart ;  and  though  the 
sermons  he  preached  were  not  after  his  father's  fash- 
ion, nevertheless  the  father  was  sometimes  the  text ; 
and  whenever  this  was  the  case,  the  discourse  glows 
with  an  eloquence  not  surpassed  by  Taylor  or  Bossuet. 
No  biographer  of  Hazlitt  can  dispense  with  long  quo- 
tation, although  how  this  biographer  will  have  the 
courage  to  resume  the  pen  when  his  next  quotation 
comes  to  an  end  he  cannot  think. 

"  A  Dissenting  minister  is  a  character  not  so  easily  to  be 
dispensed  with,  and  whose  place  cannot  be  well  supplied.  It 
is  a  pity  that  this  character  has  worn  itself  out ;  that  that 
pulse  of  thought  and  feeling  has  ceased  almost  to  beat  in  the 
heart  of  a  nation,  who,  if  not  remarkable  for  sincerity  and 
plain  downright  well-meaning,  are  remarkable  for  nothing. 
But  we  have  known  some  such,  in  happier  days,  who  had 
been  brought  up  and  lived  from  youth  to  age  in  the  one  con- 
stant belief  of  God  and  of  his  Christ,  and  who  thought  all 
other  things  but  dross  compared  with  the  glory  hereafter  to 
be  revealed.  Their  youthful  hopes  and  vanity  had  been 
mortified  in  them,  even  in  their  boyish  days,  by  the  neglect 
and  supercilious  regards  of  the  world ;  and  they  turned  to 
look  into  their  own  minds  for  something  else  to  build  their 


n.]  WEM  23 

hopes  and  confidence  upon.  They  were  true  priests.  They 
set  up  an  image  in  their  own  minds  —  it  was  truth ;  they  wor- 
shipped an  idol  there  —  it  was  justice.  They  looked  on  man 
as  their  brother,  and  only  bowed  the  knee  to  the  Highest. 
Separate  from  the  world,  they  walked  humbly  with  their 
God,  and  lived  in  thought  with  those  who  had  borne  testi- 
mony of  a  good  conscience,  with  the  spirits  of  just  men  in  all 
ages.  They  saw  Moses  when  he  slew  the  Egyptian,  and  the 
prophets  who  overturned  the  brazen  images,  and  those  who 
were  stoned  and  sawn  asunder.  They  were  with  Daniel  in  the 
lions'  den,  and  with  the  three  children  who  passed  through  the 
fiery  furnace — Meshach,  Shadrach,  and  Abed-nego;  they  did 
not  crucify  Christ  twice  over,  or  deny  Him  in  their  hearts, 
with  St.  Peter ;  the  Book  of  Martyrs  was  open  to  them ;  they 
read  the  story  of  William  Tell,  of  John  Huss,  and  Jerome  of 
Prague,  and  the  old  one-eyed  Zisca ;  they  had  Neale's  History 
of  the  Puritans  by  heart,  and  Calamy's  Account  of  the  Two 
Thousand  Ejected  Ministers,  and  gave  it  to  their  children  to 
read,  with  the  pictures  of  the  polemical  Baxter,  the  silver- 
tongued  Bates,  the  mild-looking  Calamy,  and  old  honest 
Howe ;  they  believed  in  Lardner's  Credibility  of  the  Gospel 
History;  they  were  deep  read  in  the  works  of  Fratres  Poloni, 
Pripscovius,  Crellius,  Cracovius,  who  sought  out  truth  in  texts 
of  Scripture,  and  grew  blind  over  Hebrew  points ;  their  aspira- 
tion after  liberty  was  a  sigh  uttered  from  the  towers,  '  time- 
rent,'  of  the  Holy  Inquisition;  and  their  zeal  for  religious 
toleration  was  kindled  at  the  fires  of  Smithfield.  Their 
sympathy  was  not  with  the  oppressors,  but  the  oppressed. 
They  cherished  in  their  thoughts — and  wished  to  transmit 
to  their  posterity  —  those  rights  and  privileges  for  asserting 
which  their  ancestors  had  bled  on  scaffolds,  or  had  pined  in 
dungeons,  or  in  foreign  climes.  Their  creed,  too,  was  'Glory 
to  God,  peace  on  earth,  goodwill  to  man.'  This  creed,  since 
profaned  and  rendered  vile,  they  kept  fast  through  good 
report  and  evil  report.  This  belief  they  had,  that  looks  at 
something  out  of  itself,  fixed  as  the  stars,  deep  as  the  firma- 
ment ;  that  makes  of  its  own  heart  an  altar  to  truth,  a  place 
of  worship  for  what  is  right,  at  which  it  does  reverence  with 
praise  and  prayer  like  a  holy  thing,  apart  and  content ;  that 


24  WILLIAM   HA2LITT  [CHAP. 

feels  that  the  greatest  Being  in  the  universe  is  always  near 
it ;  and  that  all  things  work  together  for  the  good  of  His 
creatures,  under  His  guiding  hand.  This  covenant  they 
kept,  as  the  stars  keep  their  courses ;  this  principle  they 
stuck  by,  for  want  of  knowing  better,  as  it  sticks  by 
them  to  the  last.  It  grew  with  their  growth,  it  does  not 
wither  in  their  decay.  It  lives  when  the  almond-tree  flour- 
ishes, and  is  not  bowed  down  with  the  tottering  knees.  *  It 
glimmers  with  the  last  feeble  eyesight,  smiles  in  the  faded 
cheek  like  infancy,  and  lights  a  path  before  them  to  the 
grave ! " l 

The  last  words  of  this  magnificent  utterance  and 
large  discourse  were  written  in  January  1818,  and 
reprinted  in  the  following  year.  The  old  man  who 
inspired  the  whole  passage  died  in  July  1820,  aged 
eighty-four. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  from  the  filial 
pride  and  fervent  language  of  Hazlitt  that  he  was  in 
the  least  inclined  to  become  "  a  Rational  Dissenter." 
It  is  only  necessary  to  read  his  philosophical  essay 
"  On  the  Tendency  of  Sects "  in  the  Round  Table 
(1817)  to  be  disabused  of  such  a  notion.  Politically, 
he  admired  the  fidelity  of  the  old  Nonconformists  to 
their  unpopular  opinions,  and  their  "  abstract  attach- 
ment" to  their  principles;  but  philosophically  he  was 
as  much  alive  as  the  late  Dr.  Martineau  to  the  crudity 
of  the  Unitarian  controversy,  and  to  the  ill  con- 
sequences apt  to  flow  from  the  habit  of  objecting  to 
everything.  Hazlitt  was  never  a  true  Dissenter  any 
more  than  he  was  ever  a  true  Democrat. 

In  1790,  when  entering  upon  his  thirteenth  year, 
Hazlitt  paid  a  long  visit  to  some  friends  of  his  father's 
in  Liverpool,  called  Tracy,  good  Unitarians,  who  took 

1 '  On  Court  Influence.'  —  Political  Essays. 


ii.]  WEM  25 

him  to  hear  Mr.  Yates  on  Sundays,  and  let  him  share 
the  French  lessons  of  a  little  Miss  Tracy.  Here  he 
read  Ttttmaque,  and  began  to  qualify  himself  for  that 
sensuous  enjoyment  of  Rousseau  which  was  to  play  such 
a  part  in  his  life.  His  letters  home  are  most  amusing. 
A  few  extracts  must  serve  :  — 

"  Saturday  afternoon  I  and  George,  with  Miss  Avis,  went 
to  a  Mrs.  Barton's,  who  appeared  to  be  an  unhospitable 
English  prim  '  lady,'  if  such  she  may  be  called.  She  asked 
us,  as  if  she  were  afraid  we  should  accept  it,  if  we  would 
stay  to  tea.  And  at  the  other  English  person's,  for  I  am 
sure  she  belongs  to  no  other  country  than  to  England,  I  got 
such  a  surfeit  of  their  ceremonial  unsociality,  that  I  could 
not  help  wishing  myself  in  America.  I  had  rather  people 
would  tell  one  to  go  out  of  the  house  than  ask  one  to  stay, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  be  trembling  all  over  for  fear  one 
should  take  a  slice  of  meat,  or  a  dish  of  tea,  with  them. 
Such  as  these  require  an  Horace  or  a  Shakespeare  to  describe 
them.  I  have  not  yet  learned  the  gamut  perfectly,  but  I 
would  have  done  it  if  I  could.  I  spent  a  very  agreeable  day 
yesterday,  as  I  read  160  pages  of  Priestley,  and  heard  two 
good  sermons ;  the  best  of  which,  in  my  opinion,  was 
Mr.  Lewin's,  and  the  other  Mr.  Smith's.  They  both  belong 
to  Benn's  Gardens  Chapel." 

"  I  do  not  converse  in  French ;  but  I  and  Miss  Tracy  have 
a  book,  something  like  a  vocabulary,  where  we  get  the  mean- 
ings of  words.  Miss  Tracy  never  does  accompts,  but  I  take 
an  hour  or  two  every  other  day.  I  will  follow  your  Greek 
precept.  Give  my  best  love  to  mamma,  and  tell  bef  I  shall 
write  to  her  next  time,  and  hope  she  will  write  to  me  in 
answer  to  it." 

His  father  replies  with  mild  philosophy  — 

"Your  conversation  upon  the  Test  Act  did  you  honour. 
If  we  only  think  justly,  we  shall  always  easily  foil  all  the 
advocates  of  tyranny.  The  inhospitable  ladies  whom  you 
mention  were,  perhaps,  treated  by  you  with  too  great  severity. 


26  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

We  know  not  how  people  may  be  circumstanced  at  a  par- 
ticular moment,  whose  disposition  is  generally  friendly. 
They  may,  then,  happen  to  pass  under  a  cloud,  which  unfits 
them  for  social  intercourse.  We  must  see  them  more  than 
once  or  twice  to  be  able  to  form  a  tolerable  judgment  of  their 
characters.  There  are  but  few,  like  Mrs.  Tracy,  who  can 
always  appear  what  they  really  are.  I  do  not  say,  however, 
that  the  English  ladies  whom  you  mention  are  not  exactly 
as  you  described  them.  I  only  wish  to  caution  you  against 
forming  too  hasty  a  judgment  of  characters  who  can  seldom 
be  known  at  a  single  interview.  I  wish  you,  if  you  can,  to 
become  master  of  the  gamut  while  you  are  there.  I  am  glad 
that  you  have  made  so  great  a  progress  in  French,  and  that 
you  are  so  very  anxious  to  hear  Mr.  Clegg's  lectures.  It  is  a 
pity  that  you  cannot  have  another  month  at  the  French,  etc. 
But,  as  matters  are,  I  hope  you  will  be  soon  able  to  master 
that  language.  I  am  glad  that  you  employed  the  last  Sunday 
so  well,  and  that  the  employment  afforded  you  so  much 
satisfaction.  Nothing  else  can  truly  satisfy  us  but  the 
acquisition  of  knowledge  and  virtue.  May  these  blessings 
be  yours  more  and  more  every  day  ! " 

At  Liverpool  Hazlitt  went  to  his  first  play. 

"  On  Friday  I  went  to  the  play  with  Mr.  Corbett,  at 
whose  house  I  dined  and  drank  tea.  The  play  was  Love 
in  Many  Masks,  and  the  farce  No  Song,  No  Supper.  It 
was  very  entertaining,  and  was  performed  by  some  of  the 
best  players  in  London,  as,  for  instance,  Kemble,  Suett, 
Bignum,  the  famous  singer,  Mrs.  Williams,  Miss  Hagley, 
Miss  Romanzini,  and  others.  Suett,  who  acted  in  the  char- 
acter of  '  Ned  Blunt,'  was  enough  to  make  any  one  laugh 
though  he  stood  still ;  and  Kemble  acted  admirably  as  an 
officer.  Mr.  Dignum  sang  beautifully,  and  Miss  Hagley 
acted  the  country  girl  with  much  exactness.  Mr.  Corbett 
says  he  will  take  us  to  another  play  before  we  go.  So  much 
for  last  week."  * 

1<(I  met  Dignum  (the  singer)  in  the  street  the  other  day;  he 
was  humming  a  tune,  and  his  eye  though  quenched  was  smiling. 


ii.]  WEM  27 

He  is  also  taken  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  to  the 
Established  Church,  and  thinks  little  of  it. 

"  On  Sunday,  after  I  had  come  from  meeting,  I  went,  but 
not  willingly,  to  Mrs.  Sydebotham's  to  dinner.  In  the  after- 
noon we  went  to  church,  for  the  first  time  I  ever  was  in  one, 
and  I  do  not  care  if  I  should  never  go  into  one  again.  The 
clergyman,  after  he  had  gabbled  over  half-a-dozen  prayers, 
began  his  sermon,  the  text  of  which  was  as  follows : — Zech- 
ariah,  3rd  chapter,  2nd  verse,  latter  part — 'Is  not  this  a 
brand  plucked  out  of  the  fire  ? '  If  a  person  had  come  in 
five  minutes  after  he  began,  he  would  have  thought  that  he 
had  taken  his  text  out  of  Joshua.  In  short,  his  sermon  had 
neither  head  nor  tail.  I  was  sorry  that  so  much  time  should 
be  thrown  away  upon  nonsense.  I  often  wished  I  was  hear- 
ing Mr.  Yates ;  but  I  shall  see  I  do  not  go  to  church  again 
in  a  hurry." 

But  he  remains  loyal  to  the  Throne.  "  I  cannot  play 
any  tune  upon  the  harpsichord  but  'God  save  the 
King.' "  Charles  Lamb  never  managed  even  to  hum 
it. 

He  adds  a  postscript,  "  I  shall  have  satis  pecunice, 
dum  tu  habeas  opportunitatem  mittendi  aliquam  partem 
mihi." 

His  father,  who  was  too  good  a  Christian  not  to  be 
fine-mannered,  sends  him  careful  directions  how  to 
deport  himself  on  his  departure  from  the  Tracys,  bid- 
ding him  be  careful  to  leave  none  of  his  things  behind 
him,  lest  Mrs.  Tracy  should  have  the  trouble  of  send- 

I  could  scarcely  forbear  going  up  to  speak  to  him.  Why  so?  I 
had  seen  him  in  the  year  1792  ( ?  1790)  (the  first  time  I  was  ever  at 
a  play  (with  Suett  and  Miss  Romanzini  and  some  others  in  No 
Song,  No  Supper;  and  ever  since,  that  bright  vision  of  my  child- 
hood has  played  round  my  fancy  with  unabated,  vivid  delight." — 
See  The  New  School  of  Reform,  in  the  Plain  Speaker  (1826). 


28  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

ing  them  after  him,  and  reminding  him  after  meeting 
to  seek  Mr.  Yates  in  his  vestry  and  say  good-bye,  and 
also  to  call  on  his  friends  who  had  showed  him  any 
attention. 

"  But  what  must  you  say  to  Mrs.  Tracy  ?  I  leave  that 
entirely  to  yourself.  But  present  her  with  your  mamma's 
respects  and  mine,  and  our  sincere  thanks,  and  tell  her  that 
we  wish  to  see  her  again,  and  that  we  also  hope  for  this 
pleasure  with  all  the  young  ladies,  and  all  of  them  quite 
happy." 

He  adds,  else  he  had  not  been  a  Unitarian  Parson 
Adams,  "  My  sermons  will  soon  be  printed.  I  shall 
embrace  the  first  opportunity  of  sending  Mrs.  Tracy  a 
copy." 

If  in  later  life  Hazlitt's  manners  left  much  to  be 
desired,  as  seems  to  have  been  the  case,  it  was  not  the 
Dissenting  minister's  fault. 

It  was  a  grave  bringing  up  for  a  man  whose  writings 
are  chiefly  remarkable  for  the  fierce  enjoyment  they 
exhibit  for  all  brave,  sublunary  things. 

"  To  see  the  golden  sun,  the  azure  sky,  the  outstretched 
ocean  ;  to  walk  upon  the  green  earth,  and  to  be  lord  of  a 
thousand  creatures ;  to  look  down  yawning  precipices,  or  over 
distant  sunny  vales ;  to  see  the  world  spread  out  under  one's 
feet  on  a  map;  to  bring  the  stars  near;  to  view  the  smallest 
insects  through  a  microscope ;  to  read  history,  and  consider 
the  revolutions  of  empire  and  the  successions  of  generations ; 
to  hear  of  the  glory  of  Tyre,  of  Sidon,  of  Babylon,  and  of 
Susa,  and  to  say  all  these  were  before  me  and  are  now  noth- 
ing ;  to  say  I  exist  in  such  a  point  of  time,  and  in  such  a 
point  of  space ;  to  be  a  spectator  and  a  part  of  its  ever- 
moving  scene ;  to  witness  the  change  of  season,  of  spring 
and  autumn,  of  winter  and  summer ;  to  feel  hot  and  cold, 
pleasure  and  pain,  beauty  and  deformity,  right  and  wrong ; 


IT.]  WEM  29 

to  be  sensible  to  the  accidents  of  nature ;  to  consider  the 
mighty  world  of  eye  and  ear ;  to  listen  to  the  stockdove's 
notes  amid  the  forest  deep ;  to  journey  over  moor  and  moun- 
tain ;  to  hear  the  midnight  sainted  choir ;  to  visit  lighted 
halls,  or  the  cathedral's  gloom,  or  sit  in  crowded  theatres 
and  see  life  itself  mocked ;  to  study  the  works  of  art,  and 
refine  the  sense  of  beauty  to  agony ;  to  worship  fame,  and 
to  dream  of  immortality  ;  to  look  upon  the  Vatican  and  to 
read  Shakespeare ;  to  gather  up  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients 
and  to  pry  into  the  future ;  to  listen  to  the  trump  of  war, 
the  shout  of  victory ;  to  question  history  as  to  the  move- 
ments of  the  human  heart ;  to  seek  for  truth  ;  to  plead  the 
cause  of  humanity ;  to  overlook  the  world  as  if  time  and 
nature  poured  their  treasures  at  our  feet  —  to  be  and  to  do 
all  this,  and  then  in  a  moment  to  be  nothing." l 

This  is  the  familiar  strain  of  the  most  eloquent  of 
English  essayists,  but  in  the  beginning  of  things 
Hazlitt  was  slow  of  speech  and  sluggish  in  fancy — the 
bent  of  his  mind  being,  as  already  remarked,  specula- 
tive and  reflective.  "  When  I  was  about  fourteen,"  be 
writes,  "in  consequence  of  a  dispute  one  day  after 
meeting  between  my  father  and  an  old  lady  of  the 
congregation  respecting  the  repeal  of  the  Corporation 
and  Test  Acts  and  the  limits  of  religious  toleration, 
I  set  about  forming  in  my  head  (the  first  time  I  ever 
attempted  to  think)  the  following  system  of  political 
rights  and  general  jurisprudence."  He  began  by 
trying  to  define  what  a  right  was,  and  then  asked, 
shrewdly  enough,  What  is  law?  What  the  real 
ground  of  Civil  Government?  Whence,  he  asked, 
has  the  community  the  right  to  coerce  any  of  its 
members  ?  Hobbes  he  had  not  heard  of,  and  probably 
he  was  indebted  to  Priestley,  one  of  the  gods  of  his 

1(  On  the  Feeling  of  Immortality  in  Youth.'—  Winterslow. 


80  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CUAI-. 

father's  idolatry,  for  much  assistance  as  he  pursued 
his  "  dim  and  perilous  way."  Four  corollaries  follow 
in  due  order,  leading  up  to  the  satisfactory  conclusion 
that  there  are  four  things  a  man  may  call  his  own — his 
person,  his  actions,  his  property,  and  his  opinions. 
On  each  of  these,  however,  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be 
said  by  way  of  definition,  limitation,  and  necessary 
qualification ;  and  we  soon  find  Hazlitt  discussing  such 
a  detail  as  the  law  against  Nuisances,  and  enlivening 
the  disquisition  with  a  pleasant  tale  of  the  rector  of 
Wem,  who  having,  as  befitted  a  Canonist,  a  quarrel 
with  the  local  attorney,  whose  name  was  Wickstead, 
used  to  collect  in  his  garden  a  heap  of  rubbish  and 
weeds ;  and  when  the  wind  was  in  the  right  quarter, 
would  observe  significantly  to  his  gardener,  "  It  is  a 
fine  Wickstead  wind  to-day,"  and  thereupon  a  match 
was  applied. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  whole  of  the 
sensible  discourse,  now  to  be  found  printed  in  the 
Literary  Remains  (1836),  was  composed  in  Hazlitt's 
fourteenth  year.  By  no  means,  but  for  some  time, 
until  indeed  he  began  to  ponder  for  another  period  of 
years  his  darling  discovery  in  metaphysics,  he  seems 
to  have  kept  turning  the  subject  over  and  over  in  his 
mind,  carrying  it  with  him  to  Hackney  Theological 
College,  to  which  seminary  of  unorthodox  religion  he 
proceeded  in  that  year  of  dread,  1793,  with  the  intent 
on  his  father's  side,  at  all  events,  of  being  turned  into 
a  Unitarian  divine. 

From  his  letters  home  we  obtain  some  knowledge  of 
the  course  of  study  there  pursued.  Hazlitt's  classical 
tutor  lectured  on  Sophocles  one  week,  and  Quintilian 
the  next,  also  on  Greek  Grammar  and  Antiquities. 


ii.]  WEM  81 

Hazlitt  tells  his  father  that  he  can  translate  better 
than  any  of  his  fellow  collegers.  Dr.  Rees  taught 
mathematics,  and  Dr.  Price,  I  know  not  what — per- 
haps pastoral  theology.  Philosophy  was  represented 
by  the  interesting  name  of  Hartley,  then  the  pet  philos- 
opher of  Unitarians.  Divinity  fared  badly  with  the 
inevitable  Belsham.  A  tincture  of  Hebrew  was  im- 
parted, and  there  was  a  class  in  logic.  Amidst  these 
time-honoured  pursuits  it  is  odd  to  find  shorthand 
being  taught.  Altogether,  as  things  went  in  England 
in  1793,  Hackney  College  was  a  better  Studium  Generate 
than  either  Oxford  or  Cambridge  at  the  same  date.  Of 
what  sort  was  the  teaching  I  cannot  say. 

The  letters  home  contain  a  moving  account  how 
Hazlitt  succeeded  in  palming  off  upon  his  tutor  the 
essay  "  On  the  Political  State  of  Man,"  and  in  forcing 
that  reluctant  professor  to  accept  it  in  lieu  of  the 
theme  actually  set.  "  My  chief  reason,"  he  writes  to 
his  father,  who  had  urged  the  abandonment  of  these 
speculations,  "for  wishing  to  continue  my  observations, 
is  that  by  having  a  particular  system  of  politics  I 
shall  be  better  able  to  judge  of  the  truth  or  falsehood 
of  any  principle  which  I  hear  or  read,  and  of  the 
justice  or  the  contrary  of  any  political  transactions. 
Moreover,  by  comparing  my  own  system  with  those  of 
others,  and  with  particular  facts,  I  shall  have  it  in 
my  power  to  correct  and  improve  it  continually.  .  .  . 
Besides,  so  far  is  my  studying  the  subject  from  making 
me  gloomy  or  low-spirited,  I  am  never  so  perfectly 
easy  as  when  I  am  or  have  been  studying  it." 

Here  we  strike  across  the  true  Hazlitt  vein  —  "  my 
own  system."  "  I  am  not  to  be  browbeat  or  wheedled 
out  of  any  of  my  settled  convictions.  Opinion  to 


32  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

opinion  I  will  face  any  man.  Kings  love  power,  misers 
gold,  women  flattery,  poets  reputation  —  and  philoso- 
phers truth  when  they  can  find  it.  If  to  'be  wise 
were  to  be  obstinate,'  I  might  set  up  for  as  great  a 
philosopher  as  the  best  of  them,  for  some  of  my  con- 
clusions are  as  fixed  and  as  incorrigible  to  proof  as 
need  be." 1  If  Hazlitt  had  been  a  Whig,  he  could  not 
have  said  more. 

In  the  letter  to  his  father  just  quoted  there  is  a 
reference  to  gloom  and  low  spirits,  banished  by  agree- 
able system-making.  There  are  many  allusions  at  this 
time  to  "repeated  disappointments,"  "long  dejection," 
and  other  symptoms  of  boyish  melancholy,  and  it  is 
plain  that  Hackney  College  was  not  congenial. 

Philosophy  and  speculation  had  their  rival  even  at 
Hackney,  for  once  a  fortnight  Hazlitt  was  allowed  to 
visit  his  brother  John,  whose  studio  was  then  in  Long- 
acre,  and  spend  a  Sunday  with  him.  No  need  to 
dwell  on  the  influence  of  these  fortnightly  meetings. 
The  brothers  were  greatly  attached  to  one  another. 
John  was  an  enthusiast  both  for  his  Art  and  for  the 
Revolution;  and  as  William  from  boyhood  seems  to 
have  fancied  himself  a  painter,  the  wonder  is  that  on 
leaving  Hackney,  as  he  did  after  little  more  than  a 
year's  experience  of  it,  he  did  not  at  once  fling  himself 
headlong  into  a  course  of  study  and  practice  of  those 
Fine  Arts  always  dear  to  him. 

He  did  nothing  of  this  kind ;  but  some  time,  prob- 
ably in  1794,  went  back  to  his  father's  house  at  Wem, 
and  there  remained,  doing  what  respectable  people 
call  "  nothing  "  for  eight  years.  His  father,  whose  ex- 

!'  On  Consistency  of  Opinion.'  —  Winterslow. 


ii.]  WEM  83 

pectations  had  been  disappointed,  probably  found  this 
inactivity  the  easier  to  bear,  as  it  enabled  him  still  to 
nurse  the  hope  that  his  son  might  yet  be  reconciled  to 
Priestley  and  Belshain,  and  become  a  preacher  of 
rational  religion  and  true  holiness. 

These  eight  years  (1794-1802)  at  Wem  were  impor- 
tant years  in  Hazlitt's  life  as  well  as  in  the  history  of 
Europe.  Few  young  men  have  so  long  and  so  quiet 
a  time  to  brood  over  their  thoughts,  to  nurse  their 
fancies,  and,  it  well  may  be,  to  feed  their  delusions. 
For  a  sentimentalist  in  grain  a  severer  discipline,  a 
more  rigorous  course  of  reading,  would  have  been  better. 
Both  Hazlitt  and  his  great  contemporary  Landor 
cultivated  their  self-will  at  too  great  a  pace  during 
these  years.1 

It  is  never  safe  to  place  much  reliance  upon  the 
confessions  of  a  man  whose  genius  lies  in  picturesque 
expression.  Hazlitt  tells  us  that  during  these  eight 
years  he  could  do  nothing.  "  I  could  not  write  a  line, 
I  could  not  draw  a  stroke,  I  was  brutish.  In  words, 
in  looks,  in  deeds,  I  was  no  better  than  a  changeling." 
Again  he  says,  "  I  was  at  that  time  dumb,  inarticulate, 
helpless  like  a  worm  by  the  wayside,  crushed,  bleed- 
ing, lifeless."  In  1796  he  chanced  to  take  up,  on  one 
of  his  many  rambles,  or  perhaps  in  Shrewsbury,  a 
number  of  the  St.  James's  Chronicle,  which  contained 
a  long  extract  from  Burke's  "  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord." 
It  was  the  first  time  Hazlitt  had  read  a  line  of  Burke's. 
Hazlitt  is  famous  for  his  "  first  times,"  and  this  was 
one  of  them.  It  was  at  once  supreme  delight  and 

*It  is  traditionally  reported  that  Hazlitt  never  read  a  book 
through  after  he  was  thirty.  Much  the  same  is  said  of  Dr. 
Johnson. 


84  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

horrid  pain.  Delight  to  disport  himself  on  those 
crested  waves,  to  be  borne  along  by  their  overwhelm- 
ing strength,  to  glory  in  their  froth  and  fume  —  pain 
to  think  of  himself  "  vainly  trying  year  after  year  to 
write  a  single  essay,  nay,  a  single  page,  a  sentence; 
and  when  to  be  able  to  convey  the  slightest  conception 
of  my  meaning  to  others  in  words  was  the  height  of 
an  almost  hopeless  ambition." 

To  wrestle  with  native  infirmities,  to  strive  to  pierce 
through  the  dull  clay  in  which  most  of  us  are  kneaded, 
is  hard  labour,  but  when  health  and  spirits  are  unim- 
paired it  is  healthy  toil;  and  side  by  side  with  the 
doleful  passages  from  which  I  have  quoted,  other 
passages  are  to  be  found  in  Hazlitt's  writings,  in  which 
he  declares  these  same  years  of  bitter  strife  to  be  the 
happiest  years  of  all.  "  I  had  at  this  time,  simple  as 
I  seemed,  many  resources.  I  could  in  some  sort '  play 
at  bowls  with  the  sun  and  moon,'  or  at  any  rate  there 
was  no  question  in  metaphysics  I  could  not  bandy  to 
and  fro  for  twenty,  thirty,  forty  miles  of  the  great 
North  Koad,  and  at  it  again  the  next  day  as  fresh  as 
ever.  I  soon  get  tired  of  this  now,  and  wonder  how 
I  managed  formerly.  I  knew  Tom  Jones  by  heart, 
and  was  deep  in  Peregrine  Pickle  ;  I  was  intimately 
acquainted  with  all  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  Eichard- 
son's  romances,  and  could  turn  from  one  to  other  as 
I  pleased."  For  novels  and  plays  there  never  was 
such  a  reader,  nor  was  he  over-critical  —  the  most 
stilted  of  heroines,  the  palest  of  sentimental  shadows, 
could  always  be  relied  upon  to  trundle  her  hoop  into 
Hazlitt's  heart.  These  things  were  more  to  him  than 
actual  events,  and  Shrewsbury  was  dearer  to  him 
because  Farquhar  had  made  it  the  scene  of  The 
Recruiting  Officer. 


ii.]  WEM  35 

To  such  a  mind,  so  situated,  and  in  the  years  1796 
and  onwards,  Kousseau  was  manna  from  heaven  — 
nectar  from  Olympus.  "  Many  a  dainty  repast  have 
I  made  of  the  New  Eloise;  the  description  of  the  kiss, 
the  excursion  on  the  water,  the  letter  of  St.  Preux 
recalling  the  time  of  their  first  loves,  and  the  account 
of  Julia's  death,  —  these  I  read  over  and  over  again 
with  unspeakable  delight  and  wonder."  "  I  spent  two 
whole  years  in  reading  the  Confessions  and  the  New 
Eloise,  and  (gentle  reader,  it  was  when  I  was  young) 
in  shedding  tears  over  them 

'  As  fast  as  the  Arabian  trees 
Their  medicinal  gums.' 

They  were  the  happiest  years  of  my  life." 

When  Hazlitt  was  not  wrestling  with  a  sluggish 
pen  or  revelling  in  Kousseau,  he  was  walking.  He 
scoured  the  country  in  all  directions,  visiting  Burleigh 
House  to  see  the  pictures  (notably  a  Eembrandt),  go- 
ing on  a  pilgrimage  to  Wisbeach  to  visit  the  farm- 
house where  his  mother  was  born,  so  that  he  might 
lean  upon  the  gate  she  leant  against  when,  as  a  child 
of  ten,  she  stood  gazing  at  the  setting  sun.  Occa- 
sional visits  he  paid  to  his  brother  John  in  London, 
where  he  met  the  Godwins,  Holcroft,  and  on  one  occa- 
sion Mrs.  Wollstonecraft. 

One  friend  he  made  at  this  time  of  his  life,  to  whom 
on  his  literary  side  he  owed  much  —  Joseph  Fawcett, 
a  retired  Unitarian  minister,  not  without  fame  in 
his  own  day  and  circle.  Fawcett  is  mentioned  as  liv- 
ing both  at  Hedgegrove  in  Hertfordshire  and  Wal- 
thamstow.  Hazlitt  delighted  in  his  society,  and 
gained  much  from  his  conversation.  Of  him  Haz- 


86  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

litt  writes :  "  He  was  almost  the  first  literary  acquaint- 
ance I  ever  made,  and  I  think  the  most  candid  and 
unsophisticated.  He  had  a  masterly  perception  of 
all  styles  and  of  every  kind  and  degree  of  excel- 
lence, sublime  or  beautiful,  from  Milton's  Paradise 
Lost  to  Shenstone's  Pastoral  Ballad,  from  Butler's 
Analogy  to  Humphrey  Clinker.  If  you  had  a  favour- 
ite author,  he  had  read  him  too,  and  knew  all  the  best 
morsels,  the  subtile  traits,  the  capital  touches.  '  So 
you  like  Sterne  ? '  '  Yes,  to  be  sure,'  he  would  say, 
'  I  should  deserve  to  be  hanged  if  I  did  not.'  His  re- 
peating some  parts  of  Comus  with  his  fine,  deep,  mel- 
low-toned voice,  particularly  the  lines,  '  I  have  heard 
my  mother  Circe  with  the  sirens  three,'  etc.,  and  the 
enthusiastic  comments  he  made  afterwards  were  a 
feast  to  the  ear  and  to  the  soul.  He  read  the  poetry 
of  Milton  with  the  same  fervour  and  spirit  of  devo- 
tion that  I  have  since  heard  others  read  their  own. 
1  That  is  the  most  delicious  feeling  of  all,'  I  have  heard 
him  exclaim, '  to  like  what  is  excellent,  no  matter  whose 
it  is.'  In  this  respect  he  practised  what  he  preached. 
He  was  incapable  of  harbouring  a  sinister  motive,  and 
judged  only  from  what  he  felt.  There  was  no  flaw  or 
mist  in  the  clear  mirror  of  his  mind.  He  was  as  open 
to  impressions  as  he  was  strenuous  in  maintaining 
them.  He  did  not  care  a  rush  whether  a  writer  was 
old  or  new  in  prose  or  in  verse.  '  What  he  wanted,' 
he  said,  'was  something  to  make  him  think.'  Most 
men's  minds  are  to  me  like  musical  instruments  out 
of  tune.  Touch  a  particular  key,  and  it  jars  and 
makes  harsh  discord  with  your  own.  They  like  Gil 
Bias,  but  can  see  nothing  to  laugh  at  in  Don  Quixote; 
they  adore  Richardson,  but  are  disgusted  with  Field- 


ii.]  WEM  37 

ing.  Fawcett  had  a  taste  accommodated  to  all  these. 
He  was  not  exceptious.  He  gave  a  cordial  welcome 
to  all  sorts,  provided  they  were  the  best  in  their  kind. 
He  was  not  fond  of  counterfeits  or  duplicates." 

Hazlitt's  devotion  to  Fawcett  both  in  life  and  after 
death  is  a  little  marred  by  the  too  great  pleasure  he 
takes  in  contrasting  his  early  friend's  generous  recog- 
nition of  good  wherever  he  could  find  it  with  Words- 
worth's steady  reluctance  to  see  good  in  anything  but 
himself.  But  we  must  certainly  rank  Joseph  Fawcett 
as  among  the  good  fortunes  of  our  critic  that  is  to  be. 

In  1798,  when  Hazlitt  was  nearly  twenty  years  old, 
and  still  "  doing  nothing  "  in  his  father's  house,  some- 
thing happened  which  put  a  period  to  his  boyhood  and 
gave  him  understanding  and  language  —  he  met  Cole- 
ridge, whose  talk  was  "  far  above  singing,"  and  whose 
words  might  create  a  soul  "  under  the  ribs  of  death." 
How  this  meeting  came  about  will  be  told  next  in  lan- 
guage which,  however  familiar,  can  never  grow  stale, 
so  full  is  it  of  humour,  insight,  and  philosophy. 


CHAPTER  III 

COLERIDGE 

COLERIDGE  came  to  Shrewsbury  in  January  1798,  -with 
some  notion  of  succeeding  a  Mr.  Kowe  in  the  charge 
of  the  Unitarian  chapel,  then,  and  still,  to  be  found  in 
that  pleasant  town.  His  fame  in  1798  might  have 
rested,  not  insecurely,  on  his  published  poems,  which 
already  included  "  The  Monody  to  Chatterton  "  and 
the  "  Ode  on  the  Departing  Year  " ;  but  to  the  Unita- 
rians of  Shrewsbury  he  was  probably  only  known  for 
his  vigorous  efforts,  so  amusingly  recorded  by  him,  to 
procure  subscribers  for  the  Watchman,  "  preaching  by 
the  way  in  a  blue  coat  and  white  waistcoat." 

Coleridge  arrived  in  Shrewsbury  by  coach  very  late 
on  Saturday  night,  much  to  the  relief  of  Mr.  Howe, 
who  was  waiting  for  his  substitute  with  the  anxiety 
of  a  divine  who  had  prepared  no  sermon  for  the  mor- 
row. Mr.  Bowe,  on  seeing  Coleridge  for  the  first 
time,  found  it  hard  to  believe  that  the  round-faced 
man  in  a  shooting  jacket  was  his  successor  —  nor  was 
he. 

At  Shrewsbury,  Coleridge  remained  three  weeks  — 
preaching,  so  he  tells  us,  with  much  acceptance  to  a 
small  congregation,  which  contained  at  least  one  mem- 
ber shrewd  enough  to  remark  that  he  would  sooner 
hear  Coleridge  talk  than  preach. 

The  news  of  this  approaching  visit  to  Shrewsbury 
38 


CHAP,  in.]  COLERIDGE  39 

reached  Wem,  and  so  stirred  the  heart  of  the  younger 
Hazlitt,  who  had  heard  from  the  Godwins  about  the 
greatness  of  Coleridge,  that  he  could  not  wait  for  the 
promised  visit  of  the  great  man  to  his  father's  house, 
but  he  must  needs  walk  in  to  Shrewsbury,  ten  miles 
there  and  as  many  back,  to  hear  him  preach.  The 
rest  must  follow  in  Hazlitt's  own  words :  — 

"It  was  in  January  1798  that  I  rose  one  morning  before 
daylight  to  walk  ten  miles  in  the  mud  to  hear  this  celebrated 
person  preach.  Never,  the  longest  day  I  have  to  live,  shall 
I  have  such  another  walk  as  this  cold,  raw,  comfortless  one, 
in  the  winter  of  the  year  1798.  II  y  a  des  impressions  que 
ni  le  terns  ni  les  circonstances  peuvent  effacer.  Dusse'-je 
vivre  des  siecles  entiers,  le  doux  terns  de  ma  jeunesse  ne  pent 
renaitre  pour  moi,  ni  s'effacer  jamais  dans  ma  mdmoire. 
When  I  got  there  the  organ  was  playing  the  100th  Psalm ; 
and  when  it  was  done,  Mr.  Coleridge  rose  and  gave  out  his 
text,  '  And  he  went  up  into  the  mountain  to  pray,  HIMSELF, 
ALONE.'  As  he  gave  out  this  text  his  voice  'rose  like  a 
stream  of  rich  distilled  perfumes ' ;  and  when  he  came  to 
the  two  last  words,  which  he  pronounced  loud,  deep,  and 
distinct,  it  seemed  to  me,  who  was  then  young,  as  if  the 
sounds  had  echoed  from  the  bottom  of  the  human  heart,  and 
as  if  that  prayer  might  have  floated  in  solemn  silence  through 
the  universe.  The  idea  of  St.  John  came  into  my  mind,  '  of 
one  crying  in  the  wilderness,  who  had  his  loins  girt  about, 
and  whose  food  was  locusts  and  wild  honey.'  The  preacher 
then  launched  into  his  subject,  like  an  eagle  dallying  with 
the  wind.  The  sermon  was  upon  Peace  and  War;  upon 
Church  and  State  —  not  their  alliance,  but  their  separation 
—  on  the  Spirit  of  the  World  and  the  Spirit  of  Christianity, 
not  as  the  same,  but  as  opposed  to  one  another.  He  talked 
of  those  who  had  '  inscribed  the  cross  of  Christ  on  banners 
dripping  with  human  gore.'  He  made  a  poetical  and  pas- 
toral excursion ;  and  to  show  the  fatal  effects  of  war,  drew 
a  striking  contrast  between  the  simple  shepherd  boy,  driving 
his  team  afield,  or  sitting  under  the  hawthorn,  piping  to  his 


40  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

flock,  '  as  though  he  should  never  be  old,'  and  the  same  poor 
country  lad,  crimped,  kidnapped,  brought  into  town,  made 
drunk  at  an  alehouse,  turned  into  a  wretched  drummer-boy, 
with  his  hair  sticking  on  end  with  powder  and  pomatum,  a 
long  cue  at  his  back,  and  tricked  out  in  the  loathsome  finery 
of  the  profession  of  blood. 

'  Such  were  the  notes  our  once-loved  poet  sung.' 

And  for  myself,  I  could  not  have  been  more  delighted  if  I 
had  heard  the  music  of  the  spheres.  Poetry  and  Philosophy 
had  met  together,  Truth  and  Genius  had  embraced,  under  the 
eye  and  with  the  sanction  of  Religion.  This  was  even  beyond 
my  hopes.  I  returned  home  well  satisfied.  The  sun  that 
was  still  labouring  pale  and  wan  through  the  sky,  obscured 
by  thick  mists,  seemed  an  emblem  of  the  good  cause  ;  and  the 
cold  dank  drops  of  dew,  that  hung  half  melted  on  the  beard 
of  the  thistle,  had  something  genial  and  refreshing  in  them ; 
for  there  was  a  spirit  of  hope  and  youth  in  all  nature  that 
turned  everything  into  good. 

"  On  the  Tuesday  following  the  half-inspired  speaker  came. 
I  was  called  down  into  the  room  where  he  was,  and  went 
half  hoping,  half  afraid.  He  received  me  very  graciously,  and 
I  listened  for  a  long  time  without  uttering  a  word.  I  did  not 
suffer  in  his  opinion  by  my  silence.  '  For  those  two  hours,' 
he  afterwards  was  pleased  to  say,  '  he  was  conversing  with 
William  Hazlitt's  forehead  ! ' l  His  appearance  was  different 
from  what  I  had  anticipated  from  seeing  him  before.  At  a 
distance,  and  in  the  dim  light  of  the  chapel,  there  was  to  me 
a  strange  wildness  in  his  aspect,  a  dusky  obscurity,  and  I 
thought  him  pitted  with  the  smallpox.  His  complexion  was 
at  that  time  clear,  and  even  bright  — 

'  As  are  the  children  of  yon  azure  sheen.' 

His  forehead  was  broad  and  high,  light  as  if  built  of  ivory, 
with  large  projecting  eyebrows,  and  his  eyes  rolling  beneath 

1  If  Haydon  is  to  be  believed,  Hazlitt  never  forgot  his  compli- 
ment to  bis  forehead,  which  no  doubt  was  almost  as  fine  as  the 
compliment. 


in.]  COLERIDGE  41 

them,  like  a  sea  with  darkened  lustre.  '  A  certain  tender 
bloom  his  face  o'erspread,'  a  purple  tinge  as  we  see  it  in  the 
pale  thoughtful  complexions  of  the  Spanish  portrait-painters, 
Murillo  and  Velasquez.  His  month  was  gross,  voluptuous, 
open,  eloquent ;  his  chin  good-humoured  and  round  ;  but  his 
nose,  the  rudder  of  the  face,  the  index  of  the  will,  was  small, 
feeble,  nothing  —  like  what  he  has  done.  It  might  seem  that 
the  genius  of  his  face  as  from  a  height  surveyed  and  projected 
him  (with  sufficient  capacity  and  huge  aspiration)  into  the 
world  unknown  of  thought  and  imagination,  with  nothing  to 
support  or  guide  his  veering  purpose,  as  if  Columbus  had 
launched  his  adventurous  course  for  the  New  World  in  a 
scallop,  without  oars  or  compass.  So  at  least  I  comment  on 
it  after  the  event.  Coleridge  in  his  person  was  rather  above 
the  common  size,  inclining  to  the  corpulent,  or,  like  Lord 
Hamlet,  '  somewhat  fat  and  pursy.'  His  hair  (now,  alas  ! 
grey)  was  then  black  and  glossy  as  the  raven's,  and  fell  in 
smooth  masses  over  his  forehead.  This  long  pendulous  hair 
is  peculiar  to  enthusiasts,  to  those  whose  minds  tend  heaven- 
ward, and  is  traditionally  inseparable  (though  of  a  different 
colour)  from  the  pictures  of  Christ.  It  ought  to  belong,  as  a 
character,  to  all  who  preach  Christ  crucified,  and  Coleridge 
was  at  that  time  one  of  those  ! 

"  It  was  curious  to  observe  the  contrast  between  him  and 
my  father,  who  was  a  veteran  in  the  cause,  and  then  declin- 
ing into  the  vale  of  years.  He  had  been  a  poor  Irish  lad, 
carefully  brought  up  by  his  parents,  and  sent  to  the  Uni- 
versity of  Glasgow  to  prepare  him  for  his  future  destina- 
tion. It  was  his  mother's  proudest  wish  to  see  her  son  a 
Dissenting  minister.  So,  if  we  look  back  to  past  generations 
(as  far  as  eye  can  reach),  we  see  the  same  hopes,  fears,  wishes, 
followed  by  the  same  disappointments,  throbbing  in  the  human 
heart ;  and  so  we  may  see  them  (if  we  look  forward)  rising 
up  for  ever,  and  disappearing,  like  vapourish  bubbles,  in  the 
human  breast !  After  being  tossed  about  from  congregation 
to  congregation  in  the  heats  of  the  Unitarian  controversy, 
and  squabbles  about  the  American  war,  he  had  been  relegated 
to  an  obscure  village,  where  he  was  to  spend  the  last  thirty 
years  of  his  life,  far  from  the  only  converse  that  he  loved, 


42  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

the  talk  about  disputed  texts  of  Scripture,  and  the  cause 
of  civil  and  religious  liberty.  Here  he  passed  his  days, 
repining,  but  resigned,  in  the  study  of  the  Bible  and  the 
perusal  of  the  commentators  —  huge  folios,  not  easily  got 
through,  one  of  which  would  outlast  a  winter !  Why  did 
he  pore  on  these  from  morn  to  night  (with  the  exception  of 
a  walk  in  the  fields  or  a  turn  in  the  garden  to  gather  broccoli 
plants  or  kidney  beans  of  his  own  rearing,  with  no  small 
degree  of  pride  and  pleasure)  ?  Here  were  '  no  figures  nor 
no  fantasies,'  neither  poetry  nor  philosophy,  nothing  to  dazzle, 
nothing  to  excite  modern  curiosity;  but  to  his  lack-lustre 
eyes  there  appeared,  within  the  pages  of  the  ponderous, 
unwieldy,  neglected  tomes,  the  sacred  name  of  JEHOVAH  in 
Hebrew  capitals  :  pressed  down  by  the  weight  of  the  style, 
worn  to  the  last  fading  thinness  of  the  understanding,  there 
were  glimpses,  glimmering  notions  of  the  patriarchal  wander- 
ings, with  palm-trees  hovering  in  the  horizon,  and  proces- 
sions of  camels  at  the  distance  of  three  thousand  years; 
there  was  Moses  with  the  Burning  Bush,  the  number  of  the 
Twelve  Tribes,  types,  shadows,  glosses  on  the  law  and  the 
prophets ;  there  were  discussions  (dull  enough)  on  the  age  of 
Methuselah,  a  mighty  speculation ;  there  were  outlines,  rude 
guesses  at  the  shape  of  Noah's  Ark  and  of  the  riches  of 
Solomon's  Temple ;  questions  as  to  the  date  of  the  Creation, 
predictions  of  the  end  of  all  things ;  the  great  lapses  of  time, 
the  strange  mutations  of  the  globe  were  unfolded  with  the 
voluminous  leaf,  as  it  turned  over;  and  though  the  soul 
might  slumber  with  an  hieroglyphic  veil  of  inscrutable 
mysteries  drawn  over  it,  yet  it  was  in  a  slumber  ill  ex- 
changed for  all  the  sharpened  realities  of  sense,  wit,  fancy, 
or  reason.  My  father's  life  was  comparatively  a  dream ;  but 
it  was  a  dream  of  infinity  and  eternity,  of  death,  the  resur- 
rection, and  a  judgment  to  come  ! 

"  No  two  individuals  were  ever  more  unlike  than  were  the 
host  and  his  guest.  A  poet  was  to  my  father  a  sort  of  non- 
descript ;  yet  whatever  added  grace  to  the  Unitarian  cause 
was  to  him  welcome.  He  could  hardly  have  been  more  sur- 
prised or  pleased  if  our  visitor  had  worn  wings.  Indeed,  his 
thoughts  had  wings ;  and,  as  the  silken  sounds  rustled  round 


HI.]  COLERIDGE  43 

our  little  wainscoted  parlour,  my  father  threw  back  his  spec- 
tacles over  his  forehead,  his  white  hairs  mixing  with  its 
sanguine  hue  ;  and  a  smile  of  delight  beamed  across  his 
rugged  cordial  face  to  think  that  Truth  had  found  a  new 
ally  in  Fancy !  Besides,  Coleridge  seemed  to  take  consider- 
able notice  of  me,  and  that  of  itself  was  enough.  He  talked 
very  familiarly,  but  agreeably,  and  glanced  over  a  variety  of 
subjects.  At  dinner-time  he  grew  more  animated,  and  dilated 
in  a  very  edifying  manner  on  Mary  Wollstonecraft  and  Mack- 
intosh. The  last,  he  said,  he  considered  (on  my  father's 
speaking  of  his  Vindicice  Gallicce  as  a  capital  performance) 
as  a  clever  scholastic  man  —  a  master  of  the  topics  —  or  as 
the  ready  warehouseman  of  letters,  who  knew  exactly  where 
to  lay  his  hand  on  what  he  wanted,  though  the  goods  were 
not  his  own.  He  thought  him  no  match  for  Burke,  either 
in  style  or  matter.  Burke  was  a  metaphysician,  Mackintosh 
a  mere  logician.  Burke  was  an  orator  (almost  a  poet)  who 
reasoned  in  figures,  because  he  had  an  eye  for  nature ;  Mack- 
intosh, on  the  other  hand,  was  a  rhetorician,  who  had  only 
an  eye  to  commonplaces.  On  this  I  ventured  to  say  that  I 
had  always  entertained  a  great  opinion  of  Burke,  and  that 
(as  far  as  I  could  find)  the  speaking  of  him  with  contempt 
might  be  made  the  test  of  a  vulgar  democratical  mind.  This 
was  the  first  observation  I  ever  made  to  Coleridge,  and  he 
said  it  was  a  very  just  and  striking  one.  I  remember  the 
leg  of  Welsh  mutton  and  the  turnips  on  the  table  that  day 
had  the  finest  flavour  imaginable.  Coleridge  added  that 
Mackintosh  and  Tom  Wedgwood  (of  whom,  however,  he 
spoke  highly)  had  expressed  a  very  indifferent  opinion  of 
his  friend  Mr.  Wordsworth,  on  which  he  remarked  to  them, 
'He  strides  on  so  far  before  you,  that  he  dwindles  in  the 
distance  ! '  Godwin  had  once  boasted  to  him  of  having  car- 
ried on  an  argument  with  Mackintosh  for  three  hours  with 
dubious  success ;  Coleridge  told  him,  '  If  there  had  been  a 
man  of  genius  in  the  room,  he  would  have  settled  the  ques- 
tion in  five  minutes.'  He  asked  me  if  I  had  ever  seen  Mary 
Wollstonecraft,  and  I  said  I  had  once  for  a  few  moments, 
and  that  she  seemed  to  me  to  turn  off  Godwin's  objections 
to  something  she  advanced  with  quite  a  playful,  easy  air. 


44  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

He  replied  that  '  this  was  only  one  instance  of  the  ascend- 
ancy which  people  of  imagination  exercised  over  those  of 
mere  intellect.'  He  did  not  rate  Godwin  very  high.  He 
complained  in  particular  of  the  presumption  of  his  attempt- 
ing to  establish  the  future  immortality  of  man,  '  without ' 
(as  he  said)  '  knowing  what  Death  was  or  what  Life  was,' 
and  the  tone  in  which  he  pronounced  these  two  words  seemed 
to  convey  a  complete  image  of  both.  I  forget  a  great  num- 
ber of  things,  many  more  than  I  remember;  but  the  day 
passed  off  pleasantly,  and  the  next  morning  Mr.  Coleridge 
was  to  return  to  Shrewsbury.  When  I  came  down  to  break- 
fast, I  found  that  he  had  just  received  a  letter  from  his 
friend,  T.  Wedgwood,  making  him  an  offer  of  £150  a  year 
if  he  chose  to  waive  his  present  pursuit  and  devote  himself 
entirely  to  the  study  of  poetiy  and  philosophy.  Coleridge 
seemed  to  make  up  his  mind  to  close  with  this  proposal  in  the 
act  of  tying  on  one  of  his  shoes.  It  threw  an  additional  damp 
on  his  departure.  It  took  the  wayward  enthusiast  quite  from 
us  and  cast  him  into  Deva's  winding  vales,  or  by  the  shores  of 
old  romance.  Instead  of  living  at  ten  miles'  distance,  of  being 
the  pastor  of  a  Dissenting  congregation  at  Shrewsbury,  he  was 
henceforth  to  inhabit  the  Hill  of  Parnassus,  to  be  a  shepherd 
on  the  Delectable  Mountains.  Alas !  I  knew  not  the  way 
thither,  and  felt  very  little  gratitude  for  Mr.  Wedgwood's 
bounty.  I  was  presently  relieved  from  this  dilemma;  for 
Mr.  Coleridge,  asking  for  a  pen  and  ink,  and  going  to  a  table 
to  write  something  on  a  bit  of  card,  advanced  towards  me 
with  undulating  step,  and  giving  me  the  precious  document, 
said  that  that  was  his  address,  Mr.  Coleridge,  Nether-Stowey, 
Somersetshire  ;  and  that  he  should  be  glad  to  see  me  there  in 
a  few  weeks'  time,  and,  if  I  chose,  would  come  half-way  to 
meet  me.  I  was  not  less  surprised  than  the  shepherd  boy 
(this  simile  is  to  be  found  in  Cassandra)  when  he  sees  a 
thunderbolt  fall  close  at  his  feet.  I  stammered  out  my 
acknowledgments  and  acceptance  of  this  offer  (I  thought  Mr. 
Wedgwood's  annuity  a  trifle  to  it)  as  well  as  I  could ;  and 
this  mighty  business  being  settled,  the  poet  preacher  took 
leave,  and  I  accompanied  him  six  miles  on  the  road.  It 
was  a  fine  morning  in  the  middle  of  winter,  and  he  talked 


in.]  COLERIDGE  45 

the  whole  way.  The  scholar  in  Chaucer  is  described  as 
going 

'  Sounding  on  his  way.' 

So  Coleridge  went  on  his.  In  digressing,  in  dilating,  in  pass- 
ing from  subject  to  subject,  he  appeared  to  me  to  float  in 
air,  to  slide  on  ice.  He  told  me  in  confidence  (going  along) 
that  he  should  have  preached  two  sermons  before  he  accepted 
the  situation  at  Shrewsbury  —  one  on  Infant  Baptism ;  the 
other  on  the  Lord's  Supper,  showing  that  he  could  not  admin- 
ister either — which  would  have  effectually  disqualified  him  for 
the  object  in  view.  I  observed  that  he  continually  crossed  me 
on  the  way  by  shifting  from  one  side  of  the  footpath  to  the  other. 
This  struck  me  as  an  odd  movement ;  but  I  did  not  at  that 
time  connect  it  with  any  instability  of  purpose  or  involuntary 
change  of  principle,  as  I  have  done  since.  He  seemed  unable 
to  keep  on  in  a  straight  line.  He  spoke  slightingly  of  Hume 
(whose  '  Essay  on  Miracles,'  he  said,  was  stolen  from  an 
objection  started  in  one  of  South 's  sermons — Credat  Judceus 
Apella,  /).  I  was  not  very  much  pleased  at  this  account  of 
Hume ;  for  I  had  just  been  reading,  with  infinite  relish,  that 
completest  of  all  metaphysical  choke-pears,  his  '  Treatise  on 
Human  Nature,'  to  which  the  '  Essays,'  in  point  of  scholastic 
subtilty  and  close  reasoning,  are  mere  elegant  trifling,  light 
summer  reading.  Coleridge  even  denied  the  excellence  of 
Hume's  general  style,  which  I  think  betrayed  a  want  of  taste 
or  candour.  He,  however,  made  me  amends  by  the  manner 
in  which  he  spoke  of  Berkeley.  He  dwelt  particularly  on  his 
'  Essay  on  Vision '  as  a  masterpiece  of  analytical  reasoning. 
So  it  undoubtedly  is.  He  was  exceedingly  angry  with  Dr. 
Johnson  for  striking  the  stone  with  his  foot,  in  allusion  to  this 
author's  Theory  of  Matter  and  Spirit,  and  saying,  '  Thus  I 
confute  him,  sir.'  Coleridge  drew  a  parallel  (I  don't  know 
how  he  brought  about  the  connection)  between  Bishop 
Berkeley  and  Tom  Paine.  He  said  the  one  was  an  instance 
of  a  subtle,  the  other  of  an  acute  mind,  than  which  no  two 
things  could  be  more  distinct.  The  one  was  a  shopboy's 
quality,  the  other  the  characteristic  of  a  philosopher.  He 
considered  Bishop  Butler  as  a  true  philosopher,  a  profound 


46  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

and  conscientious  thinker,  a  genuine  reader  of  nature  and  of 
his  own  mind.  He  did  not  speak  of  his  Analogy,  but  of  his 
Sermons  at  the  Bolls'  Chapel,  of  which  I  had  never  heard. 
Coleridge  somehow  always  contrived  to  prefer  the  unknown 
to  the  known.  In  this  instance  he  was  right.  The  Analogy 
is  a  tissue  of  sophistry,  of  wire-drawn,  theological  special- 
pleading  ;  the  Sermons  (with  the  Preface  to  them)  are  in  a 
fine  vein  of  deep,  matured  reflection,  a  candid  appeal  to  our 
observation  of  human  nature,  without  pedantry  and  without 
bias.  I  told  Coleridge  I  had  written  a  few  remarks,  and  was 
sometimes  foolish  enough  to  believe  that  I  had  made  a  dis- 
covery on  the  same  subject  (the  Natural  Disinterestedness  of 
the  Human  Mind),  and  I  tried  to  explain  my  view  of  it  to 
Coleridge,  who  listened  with  great  willingness,  but  I  did  not 
succeed  in  making  myself  understood.  I  sat  down  to  the  task 
shortly  afterwards  for  the  twentieth  time,  got  new  pens  and 
paper,  determined  to  make  clear  work  of  it,  wrote  a  few 
meagre  sentences  in  the  skeleton  style  of  a  mathematical 
demonstration,  stopped  half-way  down  the  second  page ;  and, 
after  trying  in  vain  to  pump  up  any  words,  images,  notions, 
apprehensions,  facts,  or  observations,  from  that  gulf  of 
abstraction  in  which  I  had  plunged  myself  for  four  or  five 
years  preceding,  gave  up  the  attempt  as  labour  in  vain,  and 
shed  tears  of  helpless  despondency  on  the  Jalank  unfinished 
paper.  I  can  write  fast  enough  now.  Am  I  better  than  I 
was  then  ?  Oh  no !  One  truth  discovered,  one  pang  of 
regret  at  not  being  able  to  express  it,  is  better  than  all  the 
fluency  and  flippancy  in  the  world.  Would  that  I  could  go 
back  to  what  I  then  was  !  Why  can  we  not  revive  past  times 
as  we  can  revisit  old  places  ?  If  I  had  the  quaint  muse  of 
Sir  Philip  Sidney  to  assist  me,  I  would  write  a  '  Sonnet  to  the 
Road  between  Wem  and  Shrewsbury,'  and  immortalise  every 
step  of  it  by  some  fond  enigmatical  conceit.  I  would  swear 
that  the  very  milestones  had  ears,  and  that  Harmer  Hill 
stooped  with  all  its  pines  to  listen  to  a  poet  as  he  passed ! 
I  remember  but  one  other  topic  of  discourse  in  this  walk. 
He  mentioned  Paley,  praised  the  naturalness  and  clearness  of 
his  style,  but  condemned  his  sentiments,  thought  him  a  mere 
time-serving  casuist,  and  said  that  the  fact  of  his  work  on 


ni.l  COLERIDGE  47 

Moral  and  Political  Philosophy  being  made  a  textbook  in 
our  universities  was  a  disgrace  to  the  national  character.  We 
parted  at  the  six-mile  stone ;  and  I  returned  homeward, 
pensive  but  much  pleased.  I  had  met  with  unexpected  notice 
from  a  person  whom  I  believed  to  have  been  prejudiced 
against  me.  '  Kind  and  affable  to  me  had  been  his  conde- 
scension, and  should  be  honoured  ever  with  suitable  regard.' 
He  was  the  first  poet  I  had  known,  and  he  certainly  answered 
to  that  inspired  name.  I  had  heard  a  great  deal  of  his  powers 
of  conversation,  and  was  not  disappointed. 

"On  my  way  back,  I  had  a  sound  in  my  ears  —  it  was 
the  voice  of  Fancy ;  I  had  a  light  before  me  —  it  was  the 
face  of  Poetry.  The  one  still  lingers  there,  the  other  has  not 
quitted  my  side  !  Coleridge,  in  truth,  met  me  half-way  on  the 
ground  of  philosophy,  or  I  should  have  not  been  won  over  to  his 
imaginative  creed.  I  had  an  uneasy,  pleasurable  sensation 
all  the  time,  till  I  was  to  visit  him.  During  those  months 
the  chill  breath  of  winter  gave  me  a  welcoming ;  the  vernal 
air  was  balm  and  inspiration  to  me.  The  golden  sunsets, 
the  silver  star  of  evening,  lighted  me  on  my  way  to  new 
hopes  and  prospects.  /  was  to  visit  Coleridge  in  the  spring. 
This  circumstance  was  never  absent  from  my  thoughts, 
and  mingled  with  all  my  feelings.  I  wrote  to  him  at  the 
time  proposed,  and  received  an  answer  postponing  my  in- 
tended visit  for  a  week  or  two,  but  very  cordially  urging  me 
to  complete  my  promise  then.  This  delay  did  not  damp, 
but  rather  increased,  my  ardour.  In  the  meantime,  I  went 
to  Llangollen  Vale,  by  way  of  initiating  myself  in  the 
mysteries  of  natural  scenery;  and  I  must  say  I  was  en- 
chanted with  it.  I  had  been  reading  Coleridge's  descrip- 
tion of  England,  in  his  fine  '  Ode  on  the  Departing  Year,' 
and  I  applied  it,  con  amore,  to  the  objects  before  me. 
That  valley  was  to  me  (in  a  manner)  the  cradle  of  a  new 
existence ;  in  the  river  that  winds  through  it  my  spirit  was 
baptized  in  the  waters  of  Helicon  ! 

"  I  returned  home,  and  soon  after  set  out  on  my  journey 
with  unworn  heart  and  untired  feet.  My  way  lay  through 
Worcester  and  Gloucester,  and  by  Upton,  where  I  thought 
of  Tom  Jones  and  the  adventure  of  the  muff.  I  remember 


48  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

getting  completely  wet  through  one  day,  and  stopping  at  an 
inn  (I  think  it  was  at  Tewkesbury),  where  I  sat  up  all  night 
to  read  Paul  and  Virginia.  Sweet  were  the  showers  in 
early  youth  that  drenched  my  body,  and  sweet  the  drops  of 
pity  that  fell  upon  the  books  I  read !  I  once  hinted  to 
Wordsworth,  as  we  were  sailing  in  his  boat  on  Grasmere 
lake,  that  I  thought  he  had  borrowed  the  idea  of  his  Poems 
on  the  Naming  of  Places  from  the  local  inscriptions  of  the 
same  kind  in  Paul  and  Virginia.  He  did  not  own  the 
obligation,  and  stated  some  distinction  without  a  difference 
in  defence  of  his  claim  to  originality.  Any,  the  slightest 
variation,  would  be  sufficient  for  this  purpose  in  his  mind ; 
for  whatever  he  added  or  altered  would  inevitably  be  worth 
all  that  any  one  else  had  done,  and  contain  the  marrow  of 
the  sentiment.  I  was  still  two  days  before  the  time  fixed 
for  my  arrival,  for  I  had  taken  care  to  set  out  early  enough. 
I  stopped  these  two  days  at  Bridgewater ;  and  when  I  was 
tired  of  sauntering  on  the  banks  of  its  muddy  river,  returned 
to  the  inn  and  read  Camilla.  So  have  I  loitered  my  life 
away,  reading  books,  looking  at  pictures,  going  to  plays, 
hearing,  thinking,  writing  on  what  pleased  me  best.  I  have 
wanted  only  one  thing  to  make  me  happy ;  but  wanting 
that,  have  wanted  everything  ! 

"  I  arrived,  and  was  well  received.  The  country  about 
Nether  Stowey  is  beautiful,  green  and  hilly,  and  near  the 
seashore.  I  saw  it  but  the  other  day,  after  an  interval  of 
twenty  years,  from  a  hill  near  Taunton.  How  was  the  map 
of  my  life  spread  out  before  me,  as  the  map  of  the  country 
lay  at  my  feet !  In  the  afternoon  Coleridge  took  me  over  to 
All-Foxden,  a  romantic  old  family  mansion  of  the  St.  Aubins, 
where  Wordsworth  lived.  It  was  then  in  the  possession  of 
a  friend  of  the  poet's,  who  gave  him  the  free  use  of  it.  Some- 
how that  period  (the  time  just  after  the  French  Revolution) 
was  not  a  time  when  nothing  was  given  for  nothing.  The 
mind  opened,  and  a  softness  might  be  perceived  coming  over 
the  heart  of  individuals  beneath  '  the  scales  that  fence '  our 
self-interest.  Wordsworth  himself  was  from  home,  but  his 
sister  kept  house,  and  set  before  us  a  frugal  repast ;  and 
we  had  free  access  to  her  brother's  poems,  the  Lyrical 


in.]  COLERIDGE  49 

Ballads,  which  were  still  in  manuscript,  or  in  the  form 
of  Sybilline  Leaves.  I  dipped  into  a  few  of  these  with 
great  satisfaction,  and  with  the  faith  of  a  novice.  I 
slept  that  night  in  an  old  room  with  blue  hangings,  and 
covered  with  the  round-faced  family  portraits  of  the  age  of 
George  I.  and  II.,  and  from  the  wooded  declivity  of  the 
adjoining  park  that  overlooked  my  window  at  the  dawn  of 
day  could 

'Hear  the  loud  stag  speak.' 

"  That  morning,  as  soon  as  breakfast  was  over,  we  strolled 
out  into  the  park ;  and  seating  ourselves  on  the  trunk  of  an 
old  ash-tree  that  stretched  along  the  ground,  Coleridge  read 
aloud  with  a  sonorous  and  musical  voice  the  ballad  of  '  Betty 
Foy.'  I  was  not  critically  or  sceptically  inclined.  I  saw 
touches  of  truth  and  nature,  and  took  the  rest  for  granted. 
But  in  the  '  Thorn,'  the  '  Mad  Mother,'  and  the  '  Complaint 
of  a  Poor  Indian  Woman,'  I  felt  that  deeper  power  and 
pathos  which  have  been  since  acknowledged, 

'  In  spite  of  pride,  in  erring  reason's  spite,' 

as  the  characteristics  of  this  author ;  and  the  sense  of  a  new 
style  and  a  new  spirit  in  poetry  came  over  me.  It  had  to 
me  something  of  the  effect  that  arises  from  the  turning  up 
of  the  fresh  soil,  or  of  the  first  welcome  breath  of  spring, 

'  While  yet  the  trembling  year  is  unconfirmed.' 

Coleridge  and  myself  walked  back  to  Stowey  that  evening, 
and  his  voice  sounded  high 

«  Of  Providence,  foreknowledge,  will,  and  fate, 
Fix'd  fate,  free-will,  foreknowledge  absolute  ' 

as  we  passed  through  echoing  grove,  by  fairy  stream  or  water- 
fall, gleaming  in  the  summer  moonlight !  He  lamented  that 
Wordsworth  was  not  prone  enough  to  believe  in  the  traditional 
superstitions  of  the  place,  and  that  there  was  a  something  cor- 
poreal, a  matter-of-factness,  a  clinging  to  the  palpable,  or 


50  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

often  to  the  petty,  in  his  poetry,  in  consequence.  His 
genius  was  not  a  spirit  that  descended  to  him  through  the 
air ;  it  sprung  out  of  the  ground  like  a  flower,  or  unfolded 
itself  from  a  green  spray,  on  which  the  goldfinch  sang.  He 
said,  however  (if  I  remember  right),  that  this  objection 
must  be  confined  to  his  descriptive  pieces ;  that  his  philo- 
sophic poetry  had  a  grand  and  comprehensive  spirit  in  it,  so 
that  his  soul  seemed  to  inhabit  the  universe  like  a  palace, 
and  to  discover  truth  by  intuition  rather  than  by  deduction. 
The  next  day  Wordsworth  arrived  from  Bristol  at  Cole- 
ridge's cottage.  I  think  I  see  him  now.  He  answered  in 
some  degree  to  his  friend's  description  of  him,  but  was  more 
gaunt  and  Don  Quixote-like.  He  was  quaintly  dressed 
(according  to  the  costume  of  that  unconstrained  period)  in 
a  brown  fustian  jacket  and  striped  pantaloons.  There  was 
something  of  a  roll,  a  lounge  in  his  gait,  not  unlike  his  own 
'  Peter  Bell.'  There  was  a  severe,  worn  pressure  of  thought 
about  his  temples,  a  fire  in  his  eye  (as  if  he  saw  something 
in  objects  more  than  the  outward  appearance),  an  intense, 
high,  narrow  forehead,  a  Roman  nose,  cheeks  furrowed  by 
strong  purpose  and  feeling,  and  a  convulsive  inclination  to 
laughter  about  the  mouth,  a  good  deal  at  variance  with  the 
solemn,  stately  expression  of  the  rest  of  his  face.  Chan- 
trey's  bust  wants  the  marking  traits,  but  he  was  teased 
into  making  it  regular  and  heavy ;  Hay  don's  head  of  him, 
introduced  into  the  Entrance  of  Christ  into  Jerusalem,  is 
the  most  like  his  drooping  weight  of  thought  and  expres- 
sion.1 He  sat  down  and  talked  very  naturally  and  freely, 
with  a  mixture  of  clear  gushing  accents  in  his  voice,  a  deep 
guttural  intonation,  and  a  strong  tincture  of  the  northern 
burr,  like  the  crust  on  wine.  He  instantly  began  to  make 
havoc  of  the  half  of  a  Cheshire  cheese  on  the  table,  and  said 
triumphantly  that  'his  marriage  with  experience  had  not 
been  so  productive  as  Mr.  Southey's  in  teaching  him  a 
knowledge  of  the  good  things  of  this  life.'  He  had  been  to 
see  the  Castle  Spectre  by  Monk  Lewis  while  at  Bristol,  and  de- 
scribed it  very  well.  He  said  '  it  fitted  the  taste  of  the  audi- 

1  Hazlitt's  own  head  is  introduced  into  the  same  picture. 


in.]  COLERIDGE  61 

ence  like  a  glove.'  This  ad  captandum  merit  was,  however, 
by  no  means  a  recommendation  of  it,  according  to  the  severe 
principles  of  the  new  school,  which  reject  rather  than  court 
popular  effect.  Wordsworth,  looking  out  of  the  low,  lat- 
ticed window,  said,  '  How  beautifully  the  sun  sets  on  that 
yellow  bank  ! '  I  thought  within  myself,  '  With  what  eyes 
these  poets  see  nature  ! '  and  ever  after,  when  I  saw  the 
sunset  stream  upon  the  objects  facing  it,  conceived  I  had 
made  a  discovery,  or  thanked  Mr.  Wordsworth  for  having 
made  one  for  me  !  We  went  over  to  All-Foxden  again  the 
day  following,  and  Wordsworth  read  us  the  story  of  '  Peter 
Bell '  in  the  open  air ;  and  the  comment  upon  it  by  his  face 
and  voice  was  very  different  from  that  of  some  later  critics  ! 
Whatever  might  be  thought  of  the  poem,  '  his  face  was  as  a 
book  where  men  might  read  strange  matters,'  and  he  an- 
nounced the  fate  of  his  hero  in  prophetic  tones.  There  is  a 
chaunt  in  the  recitation  both  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth, 
which  acts  as  a  spell  upon  the  hearer,  and  disarms  the 
judgment.  Perhaps  they  have  deceived  themselves  by 
making  habitual  use  of  this  ambiguous  accompaniment. 
Coleridge's  manner  is  more  full,  animated,  and  varied ; 
Wordsworth's  more  equable,  sustained,  and  internal.  The 
one  might  be  termed  more  dramatic,  the  other  more  lyrical. 
Coleridge  has  told  me  that  he  himself  liked  to  compose  in 
walking  over  uneven  ground,  or  breaking  through  the  strag- 
gling branches  of  a  copsewood ;  whereas  Wordsworth 
always  wrote  (if  he  could)  walking  up  and  down  a  straight 
gravel- walk,  or  in  some  spot  where  the  continuity  of  his 
verse  met  with  no  collateral  interruption.  Returning  that 
same  evening,  I  got  into  a  metaphysical  argument  with 
Wordsworth,  while  Coleridge  was  explaining  the  different 
notes  of  the  nightingale  to  his  sister,  in  which  we  neither  of 
us  succeeded  in  making  ourselves  perfectly  clear  and  intelli- 
gible. Thus  I  passed  three  weeks  at  Nether  Stowey  and  in 
the  neighbourhood,  generally  devoting  the  afternoons  to  a 
delightful  chat  in  an  arbour  made  of  bark  by  the  poet's 
friend  Tom  Poole,  sitting  under  two  fine  elm-trees,  and  lis- 
tening to  the  bees  humming  round  us,  while  we  quaffed  our 
flip.  It  was  agreed,  among  other  things,  that  we  should 


62  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

make  a  jaunt  down  the  Bristol  Channel  as  far  as  Linton. 
We  set  off  together  on  foot  —  Coleridge,  John  Chester,  and 
I.  This  Chester  was  a  native  of  Nether  Stowey,  one  of 
those  who  were  attracted  to  Coleridge's  discourse  as  flies  are 
to  honey,  or  bees  in  swarming  time  to  the  sound  of  a  brass 
pan.  He  '  followed  in  the  chase  like  a  dog  who  hunts,  not 
like  one  that  made  up  the  cry.'  He  had  on  a  brown  cloth 
coat,  boots,  and  corduroy  breeches,  was  low  in  stature,  bow- 
legged,  had  a  drag  in  his  walk  like  a  drover,  which  he 
assisted  by  a  hazel  switch,  and  kept  up  a  sort  of  trot  by  the 
side  of  Coleridge,  like  a  running  footman  by  a  state  coach, 
that  he  might  not  lose  a  syllable  or  sound  that  fell  from 
Coleridge's  lips.  He  told  me  his  private  opinion,  that 
Coleridge  was  a  wonderful  man.  He  scarcely  opened  his 
lips,  much  less  offered  an  opinion,  the  whole  way ;  yet  of 
the  three,  had  I  to  choose  during  that  journey,  I  would  be 
John  Chester.  He  afterwards  followed  Coleridge  into  Ger- 
many, where  the  Kantean  philosophers  were  puzzled  how 
to  bring  him  under  any  of  their  categories.  When  he  sat 
down  at  table  with  his  idol,  John's  felicity  was  complete ; 
Sir  Walter  Scott's,  or  Mr.  Blackwood's,  when  they  sat  down 
at  the  same  table  with  the  King,  was  not  more  so.  We 
passed  Dunster  on  our  right,  a  small  town  between  the 
brow  of  a  hill  and  the  sea.  I  remember  eyeing  it  wistfully 
as  it  lay  below  us :  contrasted  with  the  woody  scene 
around,  it  looked  as  clear,  as  pure,  as  embrowned  and  ideal 
as  any  landscape  I  have  seen  since  of  Caspar  Poussin's  or 
Domenichino's.  We  had  a  long  day's  march  —  our  feet 
kept  time  to  the  echoes  of  Coleridge's  tongue  —  through 
Minehead  and  by  the  Blue  Anchor,  and  on  to  Linton, 
which  we  did  not  reach  till  near  midnight,  and  where  we 
had  some  difficulty  in  making  a  lodgment.  We,  however, 
knocked  the  people  of  the  house  up  at  last,  and  we  were 
repaid  for  our  apprehensions  and  fatigue  by  some  excellent 
rashers  of  fried  bacon  and  eggs.  The  view  in  coming  along 
had  been  splendid.  We  walked  for  miles  and  miles  on  dark 
brown  heaths  overlooking  the  Channel,  with  the  Welsh  hills 
beyond,  and  at  times  descended  into  little  sheltered  valleys 
close  by  the  seaside,  with  a  smuggler's  face  scowling  by  us, 


in.]  COLERIDGE  63 

and  then  had  to  ascend  conical  hills  with  a  path  winding  up 
through  a  coppice  to  a  barren  top,  like  a  monk's  shaven 
crown,  from  one  of  which  I  pointed  out  to  Coleridge's  notice 
the  bare  masts  of  a  vessel  on  the  very  edge  of  the  horizon, 
and  within  the  red-orbed  disc  of  the  setting  sun,  like  his 
own  spectre-ship  in  the  Ancient  Mariner.  At  Linton  the 
character  of  the  seacoast  becomes  more  marked  and  rugged. 
There  is  a  place  called  the  Valley  of  Hocks  (I  suspect  this 
was  only  the  poetical  name  for  it),  bedded  among  precipices 
overhanging  the  sea,  with  rocky  caverns  beneath,  into  which 
the  waves  dash,  and  where  the  seagull  for  ever  wheels  its 
screaming  flight.  On  the  tops  of  these  are  huge  stones 
thrown  transverse,  as  if  an  earthquake  had  tossed  them 
there,  and  behind  these  is  a  fretwork  of  perpendicular 
rocks,  something  like  the  Giant's  Causeway.  A  thunder- 
storm came  on  while  we  were  at  the  inn,  and  Coleridge  was 
running  out  bareheaded  to  enjoy  the  commotion  of  the  ele- 
ments in  the  Valley  of  Hocks  ;  but  as  if  in  spite,  the  clouds 
only  muttered  a  few  angry  sounds,  and  let  fall  a  few  refresh- 
ing drops.  Coleridge  told  me  that  he  and  Wordsworth 
were  to  have  made  this  place  the  scene  of  a  prose  tale, 
which  was  to  have  been  in  the  manner  of,  but  far  superior 
to,  the  'Death  of  Abel,'  but  they  had  relinquished  the 
design.  In  the  morning  of  the  second  day  we  breakfasted 
luxuriously,  in  an  old-fashioned  parlour,  on  tea,  toast,  eggs, 
and  honey,  in  the  very  sight  of  the  beehives  from  which  it 
had  been  taken,  and  a  garden  full  of  thyme  and  wild 
flowers  that  had  produced  it.  On  this  occasion  Coleridge 
spoke  of  Virgil's  Georgics,  but  not  well.  I  do  not  think  he 
had  much  feeling  for  the  classical  or  elegant.  It  was  in 
this  room  that  we  found  a  little  worn-out  copy  of  the  Sea- 
sons, lying  in  a  window-seat,  on  which  Coleridge  exclaimed, 
'  That  is  true  fame  ! '  He  said  Thomson  was  a  great  poet 
rather  than  a  good  one ;  his  style  was  as  meretricious  as  his 
thoughts  were  natural.  He  spoke  of  Cowper  as  the  best 
modern  poet.  He  said  the  Lyrical  Ballads  were  an  experi- 
ment about  to  be  tried  by  him  and  Wordsworth,  to  see  how 
far  the  public  taste  would  endure  poetry  written  in  a  more 
natural  and  simple  style  than  had  hitherto  been  attempted ; 


64  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

totally  discarding  the  artifices  of  poetical  diction,  and  mak- 
ing use  only  of  such  words  as  had  probably  been  common 
in  the  most  ordinary  language  since  the  days  of  Henry  II. 
Some  comparison  was  introduced  between  Shakespeare 
and  Milton.  He  said  '  he  hardly  knew  which  to  prefer. 
Shakespeare  appeared  to  him  a  mere  stripling  in  the  art ; 
he  was  as  tall  and  as  strong,  with  infinitely  more  activity 
than  Milton,  but  he  never  appeared  to  have  come  to  man's 
estate ;  or  if  he  had,  he  would  not  have  been  a  man,  but  a 
monster.'  He  spoke  with  contempt  of  Gray,  and  with  intol- 
erance of  Pope.  He  did  not  like  the  versification  of  the 
latter.  He  observed  that  '  the  ears  of  these  couplet-writers 
might  be  charged  with  having  short  memories  that  could 
not  retain  the  harmony  of  whole  passages.'  He  thought 
little  of  Junius  as  a  writer ;  he  had  a  dislike  of  Dr.  John- 
son ;  and  a  much  higher  opinion  of  Burke  as  an  orator  and 
politician  than  of  Fox  or  Pitt.  He,  however,  thought  him 
very  inferior  in  richness  of  style  and  imagery  to  some  of  our 
elder  prose-writers,  particularly  Jeremy  Taylor.  He  liked 
Richardson,  but  not  Fielding ;  nor  could  I  get  him  to  enter 
into  the  merits  of  Caleb  Williams.  In  short,  he  was  pro- 
found and  discriminating  with  respect  to  those  authors 
whom  he  liked,  and  where  he  gave  his  judgment  fair  play ; 
capricious,  perverse,  and  prejudiced  in  his  antipathies  and 
distastes.  We  loitered  on  the  'ribbed  sea-sands'  in  such 
talk  as  this  a  whole  morning,  and  I  recollect  met  with  a 
curious  seaweed,  of  which  John  Chester  told  us  the  country 
name !  A  fisherman  gave  Coleridge  an  account  of  a  boy 
that  had  been  drowned  the  day  before,  and  that  they  had  tried 
to  save  at  the  risk  of  their  own  lives.  He  said  '  he  did  not 
know  how  it  was  that  they  ventured,  but,  sir,  we  have  a 
nature  towards  one  another.'  This  expression,  Coleridge 
remarked  to  me,  was  a  fine  illustration  of  that  theory  of 
disinterestedness  which  I  (in  common  with  Butler)  had 
adopted.  I  broached  to  him  an  argument  of  mine  to  prove 
that  likeness  was  not  mere  association  of  ideas.  I  said  that 
the  mark  in  the  sand  put  one  in  mind  of  a  man's  foot,  not 
because  it  was  part  of  a  former  impression  of  a  man's  foot 
(for  it  was  quite  new),  but  because  it  was  like  the  shape  of 


in.]  COLERIDGE  65 

a  man's  foot.  He  assented  to  the  justness  of  this  distinc- 
tion (which  I  have  explained  at  length  elsewhere,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  curious),  and  John  Chester  listened  ;  not  from 
any  interest  in  the  subject,  but  because  he  was  astonished 
that  I  should  be  able  to  suggest  anything  to  Coleridge  that 
he  did  not  already  know.  We  returned  on  the  third  morn- 
ing, and  Coleridge  remarked  the  silent  cottage-smoke  curl- 
ing up  the  valleys  where,  a  few  evenings  before,  we  had 
seen  the  lights  gleaming  through  the  dark. 

"  In  a  day  or  two  after  we  arrived  at  Stowey,  we  set  out, 
I  on  my  return  home,  and  he  for  Germany.  It  was  a  Sun- 
day morning,  and  he  was  to  preach  that  day  for  Dr.  Toul- 
min  of  Taunton.  I  asked  him  if  he  had  prepared  anything 
for  the  occasion  ?  He  said  he  had  not  even  thought  of  the 
text,  but  should  as  soon  as  we  parted.  I  did  not  go  to 
hear  him  —  this  was  a  fault  —  but  we  met  in  the  evening 
at  Bridgewater.  The  next  day  we  had  a  long  day's  walk  to 
Bristol,  and  sat  down,  I  recollect,  by  a  well-side  on  the  road 
to  cool  ourselves  and  satisfy  our  thirst,  when  Coleridge  re- 
peated to  me  some  descriptive  lines  from  his  tragedy  of 
Remorse ;  which  I  must  say  became  his  mouth  and  that 
occasion  better  than  they,  some  years  after,  did  Mr.  Ellis- 
ton's  and  the  Drury  Lane  boards  — 

1  0  memory  !  shield  me  from  the  world's  poor  strife, 
And  give  those  scenes  thine  everlasting  life.'  "  * 

1  First  published  in  the  Examiner,  Jan.  12,  1817.  Reprinted 
with  additions  in  the  Liberal  (1823) ,  again  in  Literary  Remains 
(1836),  ii.  359,  and  again  in  Winterslow  (1850).  The  quotation  I 
have  made,  though  long,  is  not  complete. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE    LOUVRE 

HAZLITT'S  grandson  tells  us  that  the  obscurest  part 
of  his  grandfather's  youth  succeeds  the  meeting  with 
Coleridge,  and  the  events  Hazlitt  has  himself  recorded 
which  followed  immediately  upon  that  great  occasion. 
He  still  continued  to  live  at  Wem  under  his  father's 
roof,  and  to  torment  himself  and  tease  his  pen,  that 
must  have  itched  for  other  matter,  about  that  "  Nat- 
ural Disinterestedness  of  the  Human  Mind,"  which  he 
thought  he  had  discovered,  and  pined  to  make  plainer 
to  the  world  than  he  had  been  able  to  do  to  Coleridge 
on  the  Shrewsbury  Road.  This  much  belaboured  and 
beloved  essay  did  not  get  printed  till  1805,  but  it  lay 
fermenting  in  the  mind  all  these  years. 

This  also  was  the  time,  1799-1802,  when  Hazlitt 
made  that  intimate,  soul-searching  acquaintance  with 
the  poetry  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  which  en- 
3,bled  him  at  any  time  with  equal  dexterity  to  please 
with  exquisite  praise  or  to  wound  with  deadly  sarcasm 
the  self-love  of  its  producers.  There  have  been  many 
Wordsworthians  during  the  last  hundred  years;  but 
never  a  man  among  them  knew  Wordsworth's  poetry 
more  intimately,  or  entered  into  its  true  unfettered 
spirit  with  greater  reality  than  Hazlitt.  No  finer 
compliment  can  be  paid  a  poet  than  to  let  the  best  of 
him  become  a  portion  of  your  being.  Whenever 

66 


CHAP,  iv.]  THE  LOUVRE  67 

Hazlitt  was  stirred  to  his  depths,  we  may  discern 
Wordsworth  moving  on  the  face  of  the  waters. 

In  1799  Crabb  Kobinson,  in  that  diary  of  his  which 
is  of  so  much  assistance  in  helping  one  to  trace  the 
history  of  feeling  during  the  early  part  of  the  last 
century,  mentions  how  he  met  Hazlitt,  then  just  of 
age,  and  reckoned  him  one  of  the  cleverest  men  he 
had  ever  seen  —  which  in  1799  was  perhaps  not  saying 
much,  but  a  compliment  was  intended.  Robinson, 
like  Hazlitt,  had  been  brought  up  among  Socinians, 
and  in  some  respects  they  were  like-minded,  but  their 
temperaments  were  as  different  as  their  destinies. 
Kobinson  stands  eternally  in  Hazlitt's  debt ;  for  it  was 
to  Hazlitt  he  owed  his  introduction  to  the  Lyrical 
Ballads  and  the  poems  generally  of  Coleridge,  Words- 
worth, and  Lamb.  An  introduction  indeed!  What 
gift  could  any  fairy  godmother  bestow  equal  to  that 
of  having  your  face  turned  early  to  the  light?  As 
time  went  on  the  good  Kobinson,  as  Carlyle  might 
say,  found  Hazlitt  not  a  little  trying ;  his  style,  like 
Burke's,  was  forked,  and  crested  as  a  serpent's ;  he 
was  not  of  the  stuff  poet-worshippers  are  made  of ;  his 
"  tap  "  was  too  bitter,  his  stride  too  long,  his  point  of 
view  too  independent  to  suit  Robinson,  who,  living 
down  to  our  own  day,  used  to  suffer  agony  when  his 
brilliant  young  friend  Walter  Bagehot  would  vehe- 
mently express  his  preference  for  Hazlitt  over  Lamb. 
"  You,  sir,"  so  Robinson  would  cry  in  his  anguish, 
"  you  prefer  the  works  of  that  scoundrel,  that  odious, 
that  malignant  writer,  to  the  exquisite  essays  of  that 
angelic  creature !  " 

Hazlitt,  though  mainly  at  Wem,  continued  to  visit 
his  brother  John  in  London.  John  had  many  friends, 


58  WILLIAM   IIAZLITT  [CHAP. 

all  of  a  liberal  hue  —  Godwins,  Wollstonecrafts,  Hoi- 
crofts,  Rickmans,  Burneys,  and  the  like;  and  through 
these,  or  some  of  them,  Hazlitt  made  the  acquaintance 
of  the  man  —  of  all  the  men  then  living  in  London  the 
one  best  worth  knowing — Charles  Lamb.  Him  he  met 
for  the  first  time  at  the  Godwins',  where  a  dispute  was 
going  on  of  rather  an  undergraduate  complexion,  a 
"  boshy  "  kind  of  talk,  as  to  whether  it  were  best  to 
have  man  as  he  was  or  as  he  is  to  be.  Coleridge  said 
one  thing,  and  Godwin  another,  and  Holcroft  both, 
when  Lamb  stuttered  forth,  "  Give  me  man  as  he  is 
not  to  be."  Long  friendships  are  often  founded  on 
stray  remarks  —  the  one  between  Johnson  and  Rey- 
nolds,  for  example  —  and  this  saying  of  Lamb's  took 
Hazlitt  by  storm  and  established  relations  which, 
though  not  unbroken,  were  always  renewed,  and  con- 
tinued to  the  bitter  end.  The  exact  date  of  their  first 
meeting  is  not  known ;  it  may  have  been  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  but  probably  it  was  in  the  nineteenth. 
Hazlitt  also  at  this  time  became  intimate  with  John 
Stoddart,  whose  sister  Sarah  he  was  to  marry  later  on. 
John  and  Sarah  were  the  only  children  of  a  retired 
lieutenant  in  the  navy  who  lived  at  Salisbury,  and 
had  a  small  property  at  Winterslow.  John  was  at 
this  time  a  student  of  the  Civil  Law  and  a  member  of 
Lincoln's  Inn,  of  strong  revolution  principles,  and  a 
hater  of  William  Pitt.  He  seems  to  have  persuaded 
Hazlitt  to  attend  with  him  a  famous  course  of  lectures 
on  "Things  in  General,"  delivered  in  Lincoln's  Inn 
Hall  by  Mackintosh.  Three  references  to  these  lec- 
tures are  to  be  found  in  some  "  Remarks  on  the  Systems 
of  Hartley  and  Helvetius,"  which  Hazlitt  printed  in 
1806  along  with  his  essay  "  In  Defence  of  the  Natural 


iv.]  THE  LOUVEE  59 

Disinterestedness  of  the  Human  Mind."  It  must  have 
been  a  wonderful  course  of  lectures  ;  but  I  cannot 
believe  the  lectures  themselves  were  so  well  worth 
hearing  as  Hazlitt's  account  of  them  is  still  worth 
reading :  — 

"  There  was  a  greater  degree  of  power,  or  of  dashing  and 
splendid  effect  (we  wish  we  could  add,  an  equally  humane 
and  liberal  spirit),  in  the  '  Lectures  on  the  Law  of  Nature 
and  Nations,'  formerly  delivered  by  Sir  James  (then  Mr.) 
Mackintosh  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Hall.  He  showed  greater  confi- 
dence ;  was  more  at  home  there.  The  effect  was  more 
electrical  and  instantaneous,  and  this  elicited  a  prouder  dis- 
play of  intellectual  riches  and  a  more  animated  and  imposing 
mode  of  delivery.  He  grew  wanton  with  success.  Dazzling 
others  by  the  brilliancy  of  his  acquirements,  dazzled  himself 
by  the  admiration  they  excited,  he  lost  fear  as  well  as  pru- 
dence; dared  everything,  carried  everything  before  him. 
The  Modern  Philosophy,  counter-scarp,  outworks,  citadel, 
and  all,  fell  without  a  blow,  by  '  the  whiff  and  wind  of  his 
fell  doctrine ,'  as  if  it  had  been  a  pack  of  cards.  The  vol- 
cano of  the  French  Revolution  was  seen  expiring  in  its  own 
flames,  like  a  bonfire  made  of  straw;  the  principles  of 
Reform  were  scattered  in  all  directions,  like  chaff  before  the 
keen  northern  blast.  He  laid  about  him  like  one  inspired ; 
nothing  could  withstand  his  envenomed  tooth.  Like  some 
savage  beast  got  into  the  garden  of  the  fabled  Hesperides, 
he  made  clear  work  of  it,  root  and  branch,  with  white, 
foaming  tusks  — 

'Laid  waste  the  borders,  and  o'erthrew  the  bowers.' 

The  havoc  was  amazing,  the  desolation  was  complete.  As 
to  our  visionary  sceptics  and  Utopian  philosophers,  they  stood 
no  chance  with  our  lecturer ;  he  did  not  '  carve  [them  as  a 
dish  fit  for  the  gods,  but  hewed  them  as  a  carcase  fit  for 
hounds.'  Poor  Godwin,  who  had  come,  in  the  bonhomie 
and  candour  of  his  nature,  to  hear  what  new  light  had 
broken  in  upon  his  old  friend,  was  obliged  to  quit  the  field, 


60  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

and  slunk  away  after  an  exulting  taunt  thrown  out  at  '  such 
fanciful  chimeras  as  a  golden  mountain  or  a  perfect  man.' 
Mr.  Mackintosh  had  something  of  the  air,  much  of  the  dex- 
terity and  self-possession,  of  a  political  and  philosophical 
juggler;  and  an  eager  and  admiring  audience  gaped  and 
greedily  swallowed  the  gilded  bait  of  sophistry,  prepared  for 
their  credulity  and  wonder.  Those  of  us  who  attended  day 
after  day,  and  were  accustomed  to  have  all  our  previous 
•notions  confounded  and  struck  out  of  our  hands  by  some 
metaphysical  legerdemain,  were  at  last  at  some  loss  to  know 
whether  two  and  two  make  four  till  we  had  heard  the  lec- 
turer's opinion  on  that  head.  He  might  have  some  mental 
reservation  on  the  subject,  some  pointed  ridicule  to  pour 
upon  the  common  supposition,  some  learned  authority  to 
quote  against  it.  It  seemed  to  be  equally  his  object,  or  the 
tendency  of  his  discourses,  to  unsettle  every  principle  of  rea- 
son or  of  common  sense,  and  to  leave  his  audience  at  the  mercy 
of  the  dictum  of  a  lawyer,  the  nod  of  a  minister,  or  the 
shout  of  a  mob.  To  effect  this  purpose,  he  drew  largely  on 
the  learning  of  antiquity,  on  modern  literature,  on  history, 
poetry,  and  the  belles-lettres,  on  the  Schoolmen,  and  on 
writers  of  novels,  French,  English,  and  Italian.  In  mixing 
up  the  sparkling  julep,  that  by  its  potent  operation  was  to 
scour  away  the  dregs  and  feculence  and  peccant  humours  of 
the  body  politic,  he  seemed  to  stand  with  his  back  to  the 
drawers  in  a  metaphysical  dispensary,  and  to  take  out  of 
them  whatever  ingredients  suited  his  purpose.  In  this  way 
he  had  an  antidote  for  every  error,  an  answer  to  every  folly. 
The  writings  of  Burke,  Hume,  Berkeley,  Paley,  Lord  Bacon, 
Jeremy  Taylor,  Grotius,  Puffendorf,  Cicero,  Aristotle,  Tacitus, 
Livy,  Sully,  Machiavelli,  Guicciardini,  Thuanus,  lay  open 
beside  him,  and  he  could  instantly  lay  his  hand  upon  the 
passage,  and  quote  them  chapter  and  verse  to  the  clearing 
up  of  all  difficulties  and  the  silencing  of  all  oppugners." 1 

The  friendship  between  John  Stoddart  and  Hazlitt 
was  not  a  lasting  one.     The  former  went  to  Malta  as 

14  Sir  James  Mackintosh.'  —  The  Spirit  of  the  Age. 


IT.]  THE  LOUVRE  61 

King's  Advocate  in  1803,  taking  his  sister  with  him, 
and  there  the  following  year  Coleridge  visited  him 
and  grew  painfully  interested  in  Sir  Alexander  Ball, 
as  all  of  us  who  once  thought  it  a  duty  to  read  The 
Friend  know  to  our  cost. 

But  I  have  not  yet  reached  1803.  The  new  century 
brings  us  face  to  face  with  a  difficulty  in  Hazlitt's  life. 
How  came  it  about  that  he,  still  in  labour  with  his 
Metaphysical  Essay,  but  full  to  the  brim  of  the  new 
wine  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  and  the  "old 
October"  of  Congreve  and  Fielding,  suddenly  comes 
before  us  as  a  painter  ?  I  have  already  referred  to  his 
brother's  influence,  but  that  had  always  been  at  work. 
Why  had  he  let  so  many  years  slip  by  ?  It  is  not 
to  be  supposed  he  ever  meant  to  be  a  preacher  —  an 
author  he  cannot  have  dreamt  of  being  —  as  a  means 
of  livelihood  Metaphysics  are  not  to  be  thought  of; 
besides,  he  could  not  so  much  as  finish  one  small 
essay.  A  painter  he  had  determined  to  be  in  boy- 
hood. Why  did  he  postpone  it  so  long,  and  why  hav- 
ing done  so,  did  he  begin  it  now  ? 

His  own  account  is  as  follows  :  — 

"My  first  initiation  in  the  mysteries  of  the  art  was  at 
the  Orleans  Gallery ;  it  was  there  I  formed  my  taste,  such 
as  it  is,  so  that  I  am  irreclaimably  of  the  old  school  in 
painting.  I  was  staggered  when  I  saw  the  works  there 
collected,  and  looked  at  them  with  wondering  and  with 
longing  eyes.  A  mist  passed  away  from  my  sight ;  the 
scales  fell  off.  A  new  sense  came  upon  me.  I  saw  the  soul 
speaking  in  the  face  — '  hands  that  the  rod  of  empire  had 
swayed '  in  mighty  ages  past  — '  a  forked  mountain  or  blue 
promontory,' 

'  With  trees  upon  't 
That  nod  unto  the  world,  and  mock  our  eyes  with  air.' 


62  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Old  Time  had  unlocked  his  treasures,  and  Fame  stood  por- 
tress at  the  door.  We  had  all  heard  of  the  names  of  Titian, 
Raphael,  Guido,  Domenichino,  the  Caracci ;  but  to  see  them 
face  to  face,  to  be  in  the  same  room  with  their  deathless 
productions,  was  like  breaking  some  mighty  spell  —  was 
almost  an  effect  of  necromancy.  From  that  time  I  lived  in 
a  world  of  pictures.  Battles,  sieges,  speeches  in  Parliament, 
seemed  mere  idle  noise  and  fury,  'signifying  nothing,'  com- 
pared with  those  mighty  works  and  dreaded  names  that 
spoke  to  me  in  the  eternal  silence  of  thought.  This  was  the 
more  remarkable,  as  it  was  but  a  short  time  before  that  I 
was  not  only  totally  ignorant  of,  but  insensible  to  the  beau- 
ties of  art.  As  an  instance,  I  remember  that  one  afternoon 
I  was  reading  the  Provoked  Husband  with  the  highest 
relish,  with  a  green  woody  landscape  of  Ruysdael  or  Hob- 
bima  just  before  me,  at  which  I  looked  off  the  book  now  and 
then,  and  wondered  what  there  could  be  in  that  sort  of  work 
to  satisfy  or  delight  the  mind  —  at  the  same  time  asking 
myself,  as  a  speculative  question,  whether  I  should  ever  feel 
an  interest  in  it  like  what  I  took  in  reading  Vanbrugh  and 
Gibber?"1 

But  the  Orleans  Gallery  was  in  Paris,  whither  Haz- 
litt  did  not  go  until  1802,  after  he  had  made  up  his 
mind  to  be  a  painter,  and  had  worked  hard  for  a  season 
to  fit  himself  to  be  one.  Northcote,  whose  acquaint- 
ance Hazlitt  had  made  early  in  the  century,  may  have 
had  something  to  do  with  his  sudden  resolution ;  and 
it  has  been  suggested  that  reading  Richardson's  Essays 
on  the  Fine  Arts  greatly  affected  his  mind.  The  Rem- 
brandt at  Burleigh  House  had  something  to  do  with 
it.  A  painter  he  decided  to  be ;  and  set  to  work  with 
so  great  a  fury,  that  somehow  or  other  he  made  enough 
progress,  real  or  apparent,  to  enable  him  to  obtain  a 
commission  from  a  Manchester  man,  who  wanted  to 

1 '  On  the  Pleasure  of  Painting.'  —  Criticisms  on  Art. 


iv.]  THE  LOUVRE  63 

live  surrounded  by  copies  of  the  old  masters,  to  go  to 
the  Louvre  and  reproduce  Titian. 

To  the  Louvre  Hazlitt  went  in  October  1802,  and  in 
Paris  he  remained  four  of  the  happiest  months  of  his 
or  any  man's  life.  His  life  in  Paris  was  a  hard  one ; 
the  weather  was  bitter  cold,  his  lodgings  were  poor, 
his  purse  empty,  but  his  power  of  enjoyment,  like  the 
gaiety  of  Falstaff  or  the  good-nature  of  my  Uncle 
Toby,  breaks  the  bounds  of  his  individuality  and  over- 
flows the  world.  Both  his  mind  and  his  brush  were 
kept  hard  at  work,  and  feverishly  happy. 

"  I  had  made  some  progress  in  painting  when  I  went  to 
the  Louvre  to  study,  and  I  never  did  anything  afterwards. 
I  shall  never  forget  conning  over  the  catalogue  which  a  friend 
lent  me  just  before  I  set  out.  The  pictures,  the  names  of 
the  painters,  seemed  to  relish  in  the  mouth.  There  was  one 
of  Titian's  '  Mistress  at  her  Toilette.'  Even  the  colours  with 
which  the  painter  had  adorned  her  hair  were  not  more  golden, 
more  amiable  to  sight,  than  those  -which  played  round  and 
tantalised  my  fancy  ere  I  saw  the  picture.  There  were  two 
portraits  by  the  same  hand  — '  A  Young  Nobleman  with  a 
glove ' ;  another,  '  A  Companion  to  it.'  I  read  the  descrip- 
tion over  and  over  with  fond  expectancy ;  and  filled  up  the 
imaginary  outline  with  whatever  I  could  conceive  of  grace, 
and  dignity,  and  an  antique  gusto  —  all  but  equal  to  the 
original.  There  was  '  The  Transfiguration '  too.  With  what 
awe  I  saw  it  in  my  mind's  eye,  and  was  overshadowed  with 
the  spirit  of  the  artist !  Not  to  have  been  disappointed  with 
these  works  afterwards  was  the  highest  compliment  I  can  pay 
to  their  transcendent  merits.  Indeed,  it  was  from  seeing  other 
works  of  the  same  great  masters  that  I  had  formed  a  vague, 
but  no  disparaging,  idea  of  these.  The  first  day  I  got  there 
I  was  kept  for  some  time  in  the  French  Exhibition  room,  and 
thought  I  should  not  be  able  to  get  a  sight  of  the  old  masters. 
I  just  caught  a  peep  at  them  through  the  door  (vile  hin- 
drance), like  looking  out  of  Purgatory  into  Paradise  —  from 


64  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Poussin's  noble,  mellow-looking  landscapes  to  where  Rubens 
hung  out  his  gaudy  banner,  and  down  the  glimmering  vista 
to  the  rich  jewels  of  Titian  and  the  Italian  school.  At  last, 
by  much  importunity,  I  was  admitted,  and  lost  not  an  instant 
in  making  use  of  my  new  privilege.  It  was  un  beau  jour  to 
me.  I  marched  delighted  through  a  quarter  of  a  mile  of  the 
proudest  efforts  of  the  mind  of  man,  a  whole  creation  of  genius, 
a  universe  of  art !  I  ran  the  gauntlet  of  all  the  schools  from 
the  bottom  to  the  top ;  and  in  the  end  got  admitted  into  the 
inner  room,  where  they  had  been  repairing  some  of  their 
greatest  works.  Here  '  The  Transfiguration,'  the  '  St.  Peter 
Martyr,'  and  the  '  St.  Jerome '  of  Domenichino  stood  on  the 
floor,  as  if  they  had  bent  their  knees,  like  camels  stooping,  to 
unlade  their  riches  to  the  spectator.  On  one  side,  on  an  easel, 
stood  '  Hippolito  de  Medici '  (a  portrait  by  Titian),  with  a 
boar-spear  in  his  hand,  looking  through  those  he  saw,  till  you 
turned  away  from  the  keen  glance  ;  and  thrown  together  in 
heaps  were  landscapes  of  the  same  hand,  green  pastoral  hills 
and  vales,  and  shepherds  piping  to  their  mild  mistresses 
underneath  the  flowering  shade.  Reader,  '  if  thou  hast  not 
seen  the  Louvre,  thou  art  damned  ! '  —  for  thou  hast  not  seen 
the  choicest  remains  of  the  works  of  art ;  or  thou  hast  not 
seen  all  these  together,  with  their  mutually  reflected  glories. 
I  say  nothing  of  the  statues ;  for  I  know  but  little  of  sculp- 
ture, and  never  liked  any  till  I  saw  the  Elgin  marbles.  .  .  . 
Here,  for  four  months  together,  I  strolled  arid  studied,  and 
daily  heard  the  warning  sound,  '  Quatre  heures  passes,  il 
faut  fermer,  Citoyens '  (ah  !  why  did  they  ever  change  their 
style?),  muttered  in  coarse  provincial  French ;  and  brought 
away  with  me  some  loose  draughts  and  fragments,  which  I 
have  been  forced  to  part  with,  like  drops  of  life-blood,  for 
'  hard  money.'  How  often,  thou  tenantless  mansion  of  God- 
like magnificence  —  how  often  has  my  heart  since  gone  a 
pilgrimage  to  thee."  * 

Writing  in  his  later  life,  Hazlitt  says  that  when  he 
was  at  the  Louvre  nothing  would  serve  his  turn  but 
heads  like  Titian;  but  this  is  not  strictly  true.  No 

1 '  On  the  Pleasure  of  Painting.'  —  Criticisms  on  Art. 


iv.]  THE  LOUVRE  66 

man's  taste  is  immaculate;  and  Hazlitt,  surrounded 
though  he  was  with  all  the  glories  of  the  Louvre  of 
1802,  then  rich  with  the  loot  of  Eome  and  Dresden, 
"  triumphant  spoils  "  is  Hazlitt's  own  phrase,  fell  in 
love  with  a  picture  by  Lana,  "  The  Death  of  Clorinda," 
which  he  describes  in  a  letter  to  his  father,  so  graphi- 
cally suggestive  of  all  its  imbecilities,  that  the  conclu- 
sion comes  like  a  pistol-shot.  "  It  is  in  my  mind  the 
sweetest  picture  in  the  place."  One  is  forced  to  re- 
member how  Hazlitt  preferred  Warton's  Sonnets 
to  Shakespeare's.  At  least  a  fortnight  was  devoted 
to  copying  the  charms  of  the  expiring  Clorinda,  who 
points  to  her  wounded  breast  and  awaits  baptism  at 
the  hands  of  Tancred,  whose  helmet  serves  as  font. 
In  1867  this  copy,  always  dear  to  Hazlitt,  was  still "  in 
possession  of  the  family." x 

Whilst  absent  from  home  Hazlitt  was  a  good  corre- 
spondent, and  tells  his  father  how  much  disappointed 
he  was  not  to  see  the  First  Consul,  who  was  away  from 
Paris.  Charles  Fox  he  did  see,  going  the  round  of  the 
pictures,  speaking  rapidly  but  unaffectedly,  "  All  those 
blues  and  greens  and  reds  are  the  Guercinos,  you  may 
know  them  by  their  colours."  "He  talked  a  great 
deal,  and  was  full  of  admiration."  Fox  was  the  last 
man  to  have  acted  in  the  spirit  of  Carlyle's  gloomy 
admonition,  "to  perambulate  your  picture  gallery  in 
silence." 

When  Hazlitt  left  Paris  in  January  in  1803  he 
carried  away  with  him  at  least  eleven  copies  he  had 
made  in  the  Louvre,  "  The  Death  of  Clorinda,"  Titian's 
"Man  in  Black,"  Titian's  "Mistress,"  "  A  Holy  Family" 

1  The  original  is  to  be  seen  in  the  Turin  Gallery. 
F 


66  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

by  Kaphael,  "The  Deluge"  by  Poussin,  various  figures 
from  "  The  Transfiguration,"  and  the  sketch  of  a  head 
from  Tintoret  being  among  the  number. 

For  three  years  after  his  return  from  Paris  Hazlitt 
led  the  life  of  an  itinerant  portrait  painter.  He  had  a 
capital  pair  of  legs,  loved  the  road,  and  wielded  the 
brush  with  great  courage.  He  was  not  a  timid  painter. 
A  man  who  could  paint  a  recognisable  portrait  in  oils, 
with  an  undoubted  suggestion  of  Rembrandt  about  it, 
and  would  do  so  for  five  guineas,  was  not  likely  to  be 
without  work  in  the  north  of  England.  "  Kings  lay 
aside  their  crowns  to  sit  for  their  portraits,  and  poets 
their  laurels  to  sit  for  their  busts.  The  beggar  in  the 
street  is  proud  to  have  his  picture  painted,  and  will 
almost  sit  for  nothing."  Hazlitt  began  with  the  poets 
—  the  two  finest  in  England,  if  not  in  Europe,  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth,  whose  equine  physiognomy  Hazlitt 
greatly  admired.  Unluckily,  neither  picture  was  a 
success.  According  to  Southey,  Hazlitt  made  Cole- 
ridge look  like  a  horse-stealer  on  his  trial,  evidently 
guilty,  but  clever  enough  to  have  a  chance  of  getting 
off;  whilst  the  Wordsworth,  according  to  another 
critic,  represented  a  man  upon  the  gallows-tree  deeply 
affected  by  a  fate  he  felt  to  be  deserved.  Failures  no 
doubt,  but  not  insipid  failures.  Hazlitt  also  painted 
the  little  Hartley  Coleridge,  reserved  for  an  unkind 
fate,  but  who  lives  for  ever  "a  happy  child"  in 
Wordsworth's  verse. 

Hazlitt  is  said  when  in  Cumberland  to  have  fallen 
in  love  both  with  Dorothy  Wordsworth  and  with  a 
village  beauty,  and  narrowly  to  have  escaped  ducking 
in  a  pond  by  a  rival  for  the  hand  or  favours  of  the 
latter.  Hazlitt's  love  affairs  are  either  too  shadowy  or 


iv.]  THE  LOUVRE  67 

too  silly  to  bear  investigation.  The  less  we  can  man- 
age to  say  about  them  (though  the  shadows  can  do  us 
no  harm),  the  better  it  will  be. 

From  Keswick  the  painter  proceeded  to  Manchester, 
where  he  had  friends  and  acquaintances.  Here  he 
painted  a  half-length  portrait  of  a  manufacturer  "who 
died  worth  a  plum  " ;  and  as  the  artist  had  been  living, 
as  an  experiment,  so  he  assures  us,  for  a  fortnight  on 
coffee,  and  was  very  hungry,  he  rather  slurred  over 
the  coat,  which  was  a  reddish  brown,  in  order  that 
he  might  feel  the  manufacturer's  five  guineas  in  the 
pocket.  As  soon  as  the  guineas  were  safe,  Hazlitt 
hurried  to  the  market-place  and  dined  on  sausages  and 
mashed  potatoes,  "a  noble  dish  for  strong  stomachs ; 
and  while  they  were  getting  ready,  and  I  could  hear 
them  hissing  on  the  pan,  I  read  a  volume  of  Oil  Bias, 
containing  the  account  of  the  fair  Aurora."  Already 
was  Literature  beginning  to  reassert  herself. 

It  was  near  Manchester  that  Hazlitt  painted  the 
Head  of  the  Old  Woman  about  which  he  has  so  much 
to  tell  us  in  his  essay  On  the  Pleasures  of  Painting :  — 

"  The  first  head  I  ever  tried  to  paint  was  an  old  woman 
with  the  upper  part  of  the  face  shaded  by  her  bonnet,  and 
I  certainly  laboured  it  with  great  perseverance.  It  took 
me  numberless  sittings  to  do  it.  I  have  it  by  me  still,  and 
sometimes  look  at  it  with  surprise,  to  think  how  much  pains 
were  thrown  away  to  little  purpose ;  yet  not  altogether  in 
vain  if  it  taught  me  to  see  good  in  everything,  and  to  know 
that  there  is  nothing  vulgar  in  Nature  seen  with  the  eye  of 
science  or  of  true  art.  Refinement  creates  beauty  every- 
where ;  it  is  the  grossness  of  the  spectator  that  discovers 
nothing  but  grossness  in  the  object.  Be  this  as  it  may,  I 
spared  no  pains  to  do  my  best.  If  art  was  long,  I  thought 
that  life  was  so  too  at  that  moment.  I  got  in  the  general 


68  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

effect  the  first  day ;  and  pleased  and  surprised  enough  I  was 
at  my  success.  The  rest  was  a  work  of  time  —  of  weeks 
and  months  (if  need  were)  of  patient  toil  and  careful  finish- 
ing. I  had  seen  an  old  head  by  Rembrandt  at  Burleigh 
House ;  and  if  I  could  produce  a  head  at  all  like  Rembrandt 
in  a  year,  in  my  lifetime,  it  would  be  glory  and  felicity  and 
wealth  and  fame  enough  for  me  !  The  head  I  had  seen  at 
Burleigh  was  an  exact  and  wonderful  facsimile  of  Nature, 
and  I  resolved  to  make  mine  (as  nearly  as  I  could)  an  exact 
facsimile  of  Nature.  I  did  not  then,  nor  do  I  now  believe, 
with  Sir  Joshua,  that  the  perfection  of  art  consists  in  giving 
general  appearances  without  individual  details,  but  in  giving 
general  appearances  with  individual  details.  Otherwise,  I 
had  done  my  work  the  first  day.  But  I  saw  something 
more  in  Nature  than  general  effect,  and  I  thought  it  worth 
my  while  to  give  it  in  the  picture.  There  was  a  gorgeous 
effect  of  light  and  shade ;  but  there  was  a  delicacy  as  well  as 
depth  in  the  chiaroscuro,  which  I  was  bound  to  follow  into 
all  its  dim  and  scarce  perceptible  variety  of  tone  and  shadow. 
Then  I  had  to  make  the  transition  from  a  strong  light  to  as 
dark  a  shade,  preserving  the  masses,  but  gradually  softening 
off  the  intermediate  parts.  It  was  so  in  Nature  ;  the  diffi- 
culty was  to  make  it  so  in  the  copy.  I  tried,  and  failed 
again  and  again ;  I  strove  harder,  and  succeeded  as  I  thought. 
The  wrinkles  in  Rembrandt  were  not  hard  lines,  but  broken 
and  irregular.  I  saw  the  same  appearance  in  Nature,  and 
strained  every  nerve  to  give  it.  If  I  could  hit  off  this  edgy 
appearance,  and  insert  the  reflected  light  in  the  furrows  of 
old  age  in  half  a  morning,  I  did  not  think  I  had  lost  a  day. 
Beneath  the  shrivelled  yellow  parchment  look  of  the  skin 
there  was  here  and  there  a  streak  of  the  blood  colour  tinging 
the  face;  this  I  made  a  point  of  conveying,  and  did  not 
cease  to  compare  what  I  saw  with  what  I  did  (with  jealous 
lynx-eyed  watchfulness)  till  I  succeeded  to  the  best  of  my 
ability  and  judgment.  How  many  revisions  were  there ! 
How  many  attempts  to  catch  an  expression  which  I  had  seen 
the  day  before !  How  often  did  we  try  to  get  the  old  position, 
and  wait  for  the  return  of  the  same  light !  There  was  a 
puckering  up  of  the  lips,  a  cautious  introversion  of  the  eye 


iv.]  THE  LOUVRE  69 

under  the  shadow  of  the  bonnet,  indicative  of  the  feebleness 
and  suspicion  of  old  age,  which  at  last  we  managed,  after 
many  trials  and  some  quarrels,  to  a  tolerable  nicety.  The 
picture  was  never  finished,  and  I  might  have  gone  on  with 
it  to  the  present  hour.1  I  used  to  set  it  on  the  ground  when 
my  day's  work  was  done,  and  saw  revealed  to  me  with  swim- 
ming eyes  the  birth  of  new  hopes  and  of  a  new  world  of 
objects.  The  painter  thus  learns  to  look  at  Nature  with 
different  eyes.  He  before  saw  her  '  as  in  a  glass  darkly,  but 
now  face  to  face.'  He  understands  the  texture  and  meaning 
of  the  visible  universe,  and  '  sees  into  the  life  of  things,'  not 
by  the  help  of  mechanical  instruments,  but  of  the  improved 
exercise  of  his  faculties,  and  an  intimate  sympathy  with 
Nature.  The  meanest  thing  is  not  lost  upon  him,  for  he 
looks  at  it  with  an  eye  to  itself,  not  merely  to  his  own 
vanity  or  interest,  or  the  opinion  of  the  world.  Even  where 
there  is  neither  beauty  nor  use  —  if  that  ever  were  —  still 
there  is  truth,  and  a  sufficient  source  of  gratification  in  the 
indulgence  of  curiosity  and  activity  of  mind.  The  humblest 
painter  is  a  true  scholar ;  and  the  best  of  scholars  —  the 
scholar  of  Nature.  For  myself,  and  for  the  real  comfort  and 
satisfaction  of  the  thing,  I  had  rather  have  been  Jan  Steen, 
or  Gerard  Dow,  than  the  greatest  casuist  or  philologer  that 
ever  lived." 2 

At  Gateacre,  a  village  near  Liverpool,  he  painted 
a  head  of  Dr.  Shepherd,  a  friend  of  his  father's,  and 
the  minister  of  the  Unitarian  chapel  —  the  father, 
so  it  is  believed,  of  a  certain  Sally  Shepherd  who 
occasionally  whisks  her  petticoats  across  the  page  of 
an  essay. 

In  1804  Hazlitt  painted  his  father's  portrait,  and 
his  account  of  his  doing  so  I  will  reprint,  familiar  as  it 

1  It  is  at  present  covered  with  a  thick  slough  of  oil  and  varnish 
(the  perishable  vehicle  of  the  English  school),  like  an  envelope  of 
gold-beaters'  skin,  so  as  to  be  hardly  visible.  —  Note  by  W.  C.  H. 

a  '  On  the  Pleasures  of  Painting.'  —  Criticisms  on  Art. 


70  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

must  be  to  many.    He  calls  the  picture  one  of  his  first 
attempts,  but  it  was  hardly  that :  — 

"  One  of  my  first  attempts  was  a  picture  of  my  father,  who 
was  then  in  a  green  old  age,  with  strong-marked  features,  and 
scarred  with  the  smallpox.  I  drew  it  with  a  broad  light 
crossing  the  face,  looking  down,  with  spectacles  on,  reading. 
The  book  was  Shaftesbury's  Characteristics,  in  a  fine  old 
binding,  with  Gibelin's  etchings.  My  father  would  as  lief  it 
had  been  any  other  book ;  but  for  him  to  read  was  to  be 
content,  was  '  riches  fineless.'  The  sketch  promised  well ;  and 
I  set  to  work  to  finish  it,  determined  to  spare  no  time  nor 
pains.  My  father  was  willing  to  sit  as  long  as  I  pleased ;  for 
there  is  a  natural  desire  in  the  mind  of  man  to  sit  for  one's 
picture,  to  be  the  object  of  continued  attention,  to  have  one's 
likeness  multiplied ;  and  besides  his  satisfaction  in  the  picture, 
he  had  some  pride  in  the  artist,  though  he  would  rather  I 
should  have  written  a  sermon  than  painted  like  Rembrandt  or 
like  Raphael.  Those  winter  days,  with  the  gleams  of  sun- 
shine coming  through  the  chapel  windows,  and  cheered  by  the 
notes  of  the  robin  redbreast  in  our  garden  (that  '  ever  in  the 
haunch  of  winter  sings ')  —  as  my  afternoon's  work  drew  to  a 
close  —  were  among  the  happiest  of  my  life.  When  I  gave 
the  effect  I  intended  to  any  part  of  the  picture  for  which  I 
had  prepared  my  colours,  when  I  imitated  the  roughness  of 
the  skin  by  a  lucky  stroke  of  the  pencil,  when  I  hit  the  clear 
pearly  tone  of  a  vein,  when  I  gave  the  ruddy  complexion  of 
health,  the  blood  circulating  under  the  broad  shadows  of  one 
side  of  the  face,  I  thought  my  fortune  made,  in  my  fancying 
that  I  might  one  day  be  able  to  say  with  Correggio,  '  I  also 
am  a  painter ! '  It  was  an  idle  thought,  a  boy's  conceit ;  but 
it  did  not  make  me  less  happy  at  the  time.  I  used  regularly 
to  set  my  work  in  the  chair  to  look  at  it  through  the  long 
evenings ;  and  many  a  time  did  I  return  to  take  leave  of  it 
before  I  could  go  to  bed  at  night.  I  remember  sending  it  with 
a  throbbing  heart  to  the  Exhibition,  and  seeing  it  hung  up 
there  by  the  side  of  one  of  the  Honourable  Mr.  Skeffington 
(now  Sir  George).  There  was  nothing  in  common  between 
them,  but  that  they  were  the  portraits  of  two  very  good- 
natured  men. 


iv.]  THE   LOUVRE  71 

"The  picture  is  left;  the  table,  the  chair,  the  window 
where  I  learned  to  construe  Livy,  the  chapel  where  my 
father  preached,  remain  where  they  were ;  but  he  himself 
is  gone  to  rest,  full  of  years,  of  faith,  of  hope,  and 
charity ! " 1 

It  had  been  suggested  that  as  Hazlitt  began  his 
career  as  a  portrait  painter  by  falling  in  love  with  two 
damsels  of  different  degree  in  Cumberland,  he  brought 
it  to  an  end  by  actually  courting  a  Miss  Eailton,  the 
daughter  of  an  old  friend  and  patron  in  Liverpool. 
John  Hazlitt  made  a  beautiful  miniature  portrait  of 
this  lady,  but  the  affair  came  to  nothing,  and  the  vision 
of  Miss  Kailton  joins  the  other  shadows,  and  even  has 
the  honour  in  the  essay  "  On  Eeading  Old  Books  "  to 
be  associated  with  Miss  Walton,  the  heroine  in  the 
Man  of  Feeling.  "I  have  a  sneaking  kindness  for 
Mackenzie's  Julia  de  Roubigne  ;  for  the  deserted  man- 
sion and  struggling  gilliflowers  on  the  mouldering  gar- 
den wall ;  and  still  more,  for  his  Man  of  Feeling,  not 
that  it  is  better,  nor  so  good,  but  at  the  time  I  read 
it  I  sometimes  thought  of  the  heroine  Miss  Walton 
and  of  Miss  Railton  together,  '  and  that  ligament,  fine 
as  it  was,  was  never  broken.' " 

Hazlitt,  it  must  never  be  forgotten,  was  a  senti- 
mentalist of  the  first  water. 

His  last  portrait  known  to  fame  is  the  one  of 
Charles  Lamb  which,  after  the  vicissitudes  of  the 
auction-room,  is  now  safely  lodged  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery.  It  is  a  capital  specimen  of  Hazlitt's 
style. 

In  1805  Hazlitt  abandoned  painting  as  a  profes- 

1 '  On  the  Pleasures  of  Painting.'  —  Criticisms  on  Art. 


72  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP.  iv. 

sion.  He  never  scaled  as  a  painter  the  steep  stair- 
case that  leads  to  the  mastery  of  any  art.  In  an 
essay  contributed  near  the  end  of  his  life  to  a  maga- 
zine, and  called  English  Students  at  Rome,1  he  had 
(I  think)  himself  and  his  own  failure  in  mind  when 
he  wrote :  — 

"  The  brooding  over  excellence  with  a  feverish  importu- 
nity, and  stimulating  ourselves  to  great  things  by  an  abstract 
love  of  fame,  can  do  little  good,  and  may  do  much  harm.  It 
is,  no  doubt,  a  very  delightful  and  enviable  state  of  mind  to 
be  in,  but  neither  a  very  arduous  nor  a  very  profitable  one. 
Nothing  remarkable  was  ever  done,  except  by  following  up 
the  impulse  of  our  own  minds,  by  grappling  with  difficulties 
and  improving  our  advantages,  not  by  dreaming  over  our 
own  premature  triumphs,  or  doting  on  the  achievements  of 
others." 

1  Reprinted  in  Criticisms  on  Art. 


CHAPTER  V 

FIRST   BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,   AND   LONDON 

HAZLITT'S  first  book  was  that  Essay  in  Defence  of 
the  Natural  Disinterestedness  of  the  Human  Mind,  or, 
as  he  sometimes  called  it,  On  the  Principles  of  Human 
Action,  which  had  for  too  many  years  weighed  so 
heavily  on  his  own  mind.  To  this  disquisition  were 
added  Some  Remarks  on  the  Systems  of  Hartley  and 
Helvetius.  The  publisher  was  good-natured  Mr.  John- 
son, Cowper's  friend,  who  had  already  printed  the 
Select  Discourses  of  the  elder  Hazlitt,  and  enabled  that 
excellent  man  to  send  a  copy  to  Mrs.  Tracy  in  Liver- 
pool. The  date  of  the  first  edition  of  Hazlitt's  meta- 
physical essay  was  1805.  After  a  lapse  of  more  than 
thirty  years,  namely,  in  1836,  when  its  author  had  dis- 
appeared "  from  the  banks  and  shoal  of  time,"  Mr.  John 
Miller  of  Oxford  Street,  a  man,  so  Mr.  Ireland  notes, 
"of  thought  and  intelligence,  and  a  member  of  the 
Debating  Society  described  in  Daniel  Deronda,"  brought 
out  a  second  edition  of  the  Essay  and  Remarks,  and 
added  an  unpublished  paper  on  Abstract  Ideas,  the 
whole  making  a  tiny  book  of  176  pages,  and  dedicated 
in  the  name  of  the  departed  author  to  "  Edward  Lytton 
Bulwer,  M.P.,  one  of  the  brightest  ornaments  of  his 
country." 

Neither  in  1805,  nor  in  1836,  nor  at  any  time  since, 
did  Hazlitt's  metaphysical  discovery  attract  attention. 
Nobody  minded  it.  A  copy  was  sent  out  to  Mackintosh, 

73 


74  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

who,  says  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Hazlitt,  was  able 
"  even  amid  the  enervating  heat  of  Hindostan  "  to  pro- 
nounce it  "  a  work  of  great  ability."  Its  one  eloquent 
passage  was  said  by  Southey,  who  hated  Hazlitt,  not 
without  reason,  to  be  something  between  the  manner 
of  Milton  and  Jeremy  Taylor.  But  the  metaphysicians 
cannot  be  brought  to  take  any  interest  in  the  essay, 
and  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  dismisses  it  with  frigid 
indifference.1 

It  is,  however,  useful  to  remember  that  Hazlitt 
commenced  author  as  a  metaphysician  and  that  amid 
all  his  sensuous  enjoyment  of  what  are  called  realities, 
of  Mrs.  Siddons  rubbing  her  hands  in  the  night  scene 
of  Macbeth,  of  the  sound  of  Mrs.  Jordan's  voice, 
perhaps  as  Miss  Prue  in  Love  for  Love,  "  whose  laugh 
was  to  drink  nectar,"  of  the  azure  skies  and  golden 
sunsets  of  Claude,  of  the  smooth  ivory  foreheads  of 
Vandyke,  of  an  old  play,  or  a  new  Waverley  novel, 
Hazlitt  ever  entertained  an  equally  passionate  attach- 
ment to  abstract  ideas  and  general  propositions. 

It  would  be  unpardonable  for  a  biographer  of  Hazlitt 
not  to  state  what  was  his  metaphysical  discovery ;  and 
I  will  do  so,  not  in  the  hard  dry  style  of  the  original 
communication,  but  by  a  few  extracts  from  the  letter  to 
Gifford  (1819),  at  the  end  of  which  the  writer  insisted 
upon  repeating  and  restating  at  great  length  his  dis- 
covery :  — 

"  I  have  been  called  a  writer  of  third-rate  books.  For 
myself  there  is  no  work  of  mine  which  I  should  rate  so  high, 
except  one  which  I  daresay  you  have  never  heard  of — an 
JZssay  on  the  Principles  of  Human  Action." 

1  See  Hours  in  a  Library.  — '  William  Hazlitt.' 


v.]      FIRST  BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,   AND  LONDON        75 

"The  object  of  that  essay  is  to  remove  a  stumblingblock 
in  the  metaphysical  doctrine  of  the  innate  and  necessary 
selfishness  of  the  human  mind." 

"  This  doctrine,  which  has  been  sedulously  and  confidently 
maintained  by  Hobbes,  etc.,  and  is  a  corner-stone  of  what  is 
called  Modern  Philosophy,  has  done  a  great  deal  of  mischief, 
and  I  believe  I  have  found  out  a  view  of  the  subject  which 
gets  rid  of  it  unanswerably  and  for  ever." 

"  The  word  SELF  denotes  three  different  selves — my  Past 
self,  my  Present  self,  and  my  Future  self,  and  my  personal 
identity  is  founded  only  on  my  personal  consciousness,  which 
does  not  extend  beyond  the  present  moment." 

"  I  have  a  peculiar,  exclusive  self-interest  or  sympathy  with 
my  PRESENT  SELF  by  means  of  Sensation,  and  with  my  PAST 
SELF  by  means  of  Memory ;  but  I  have  no  peculiar  exclusive 
or  independent  faculty,  like  Sensation  or  Memory,  giving  me 
the  same  instinctive  interest  in  my  FUTURE  SELF." 

"  The  only  faculty  by  which  I  can  anticipate  what  is  to 
befall  myself  in  the  FUTURE  is  the  Imagination,  which  is  not 
a  limited  narrow  faculty,  but  common,  discursive,  and  social" 

"  It  may  be  said  that  I  do  feel  an  interest  in  my  own  future 
welfare  which  I  do  not  and  cannot  feel  in  that  of  others. 
This  I  grant ;  but  that  docs  not  prove  a  metaphysical  ante- 
cedent, self-interest,  precluding  the  possibility  of  all  interest 
in  others,  but  a  practical  self-interest  arising  out  of  habit 
and  circumstance." 

"  My  identity  with  myself  must  be  confined  to  the  con- 
nection between  toy  past  and  present  being;  for  how  can  this 
pretended  unity  of  consciousness,  which  makes  me  so  little 
acquainted  with  the  future  that  I  cannot  tell  for  a  moment 
how  long  it  will  be  continued,  or  whether  it  will  be  entirely 
interrupted  by  death,  or  renewed  in  me  after  death,  or  multi- 
plied in  I  don't  know  how  many  different  persons  —  how,  I 
ask,  can  a  principle  of  this  sort  transfuse  my  present  into 
my  future  being  ? " 

This  seems  to  me,  'who  am  not  a  metaphysician, 
sensible  enough,  but  lamentably  unimportant.  Man 
need  not  be  selfish  with  regard  to  the  future,  but  habit 


76  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

and  circumstance  will  probably,  though  not  inevitably, 
make  him  so ;  and  as  most  men  think  it  right  to  pro- 
vide for  the  morrow,  the  imagination  is  likely  to  prove 
as  active  a  source  of  selfishness  as  either  sensation  or 
memory.  But  selfishness  is  not  innate  —  that  seems 
to  be  the  discovery. 

The  passage  Southey  admired  ran  as  follows  :  — 

"There  are  moments  in  the  life  of  a  solitary  thinker 
which  are  to  him  what  the  evening  of  some  great  victory  is 
to  the  conqueror  and  hero  —  though  milder  triumphs  are 
long  remembered  with  truer  and  deeper  delight.  And 
though  the  shouts  of  multitudes  do  not  hail  his  success, 
though  gay  trophies,  though  the  sounds  of  music,  the  glit- 
tering of  armour,  and  the  neighing  of  steeds  do  not  mingle 
with  his  joy,  yet  shall  he  not  want  monuments  and  wit- 
nesses of  his  glory ;  the  deep  forest,  the  willowy  brook,  the 
gathering  clouds  of  winter,  or  the  silent  gloom  of  his  own 
chamber,  '  faithful  remembrances  of  his  high  endeavour  and 
his  glad  success,'  that,  as  time  passes  by  him  with  unreturn- 
ing  wing,  still  awaken  the  consciousness  of  a  spirit  patient 
and  indefatigable  in  the  search  of  truth,  and  a  hope  of  sur- 
viving in  the  thoughts  and  minds  of  other  men." 

The  publication  of  this  little  book  in  1805  was  a 
great  relief  to  Hazlitt,  if  no  great  benefit  to  the  world. 
He  says  about  it :  "I  felt  a  certain  weight  and  tight- 
ness about  my  heart  taken  off,  and  cheerful  and  con- 
fident thought  springing  up  in  the  place  of  anxious 
fears  and  sad  forebodings." 

His  next  publication  (1806)  was  a  political  pamphlet, 
writ  in  the  new  style  which  was  now  to  be  his.  It  was 
called  Free  Thoughts  on  Public  Affairs,  or  Advice  to  a 
Patriot,  in  a  Letter  Addressed  to  a  Member  of  the  Old 
Opposition.  This  pamphlet  was  admittedly  inspired 


v.]       FIRST  BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,  AND   LONDON       77 

by  a  famous  article  of  Coleridge's  which  had  appeared 
in  the  Morning  Post  six  years  before  —  on  the  19th  of 
March  1800  —  and  what  Hazlitt  has  to  say  in  his 
pamphlet  about  the  character  of  Pitt  was  almost  word 
for  word  the  same  with  what  Coleridge  had  already 
said  in  the  Morning  Post. 

The  pamphlet  had  no  sale,  and  but  one  copy  is 
believed  to  exist ;  but  as  Hazlitt  thought  fit  more  than 
ten  years  afterwards  to  insert  "  The  Character  of 
Pitt "  in  the  Round  Table  (1817),  he  thereby  enabled 
Gifford,  who  was  probably  already  on  the  lookout  for 
a  reputed  Jacobin,  to  spit  his  venom  in  the  Quarterly 
Review  after  this  fashion :  "  We  are  far  from  intending 
to  write  a  single  word  in  answer  to  this  loathsome 
trash  [the  Character  of  Pitt],  but  we  confess  that  these 
passages  chiefly  excited  us  to  take  the  trouble  of 
noticing  the  work  (the  Round  Table)  ;  but  if  the  crea- 
ture in  his  endeavour  to  crawl  into  the  light  must 
take  his  way  over  the  tombs  of  illustrious  men,  dis- 
figuring the  records  of  their  greatness  with  the  slime 
and  filth  which  marks  his  track,  it  is  right  to  point 
•  out  to  him  that  he  may  be  flung  back  to  the  situation 
in  which  Nature  designed  that  he  should  grovel." 1 

What  a  pleasant  prospect  lay  before  Hazlitt  !  It 
would  have  been  better  for  his  happiness  had  he  fin- 
ished his  course  at  Hackney  and  led  the  life  of  his  old 
friend  the  Eev.  Joseph  Fawcett. 

Some  readers  may  be  curious  to  have  a  specimen  of 
"the  slime  and  filth"  which  Hazlitt  borrowed  from 
Coleridge's  article  of  1800,  printed  in  his  pamphlet  of 
1806,  and  reprinted  in  the  Round  Table  in  1817 :  — 

1  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  xvii.  p.  159. 


78  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

"  Without  insight  into  human  nature,  without  sympathy 
with  the  passions  of  men,  or  apprehension  of  their  real  de- 
signs, he  seemed  perfectly  insensible  to  the  consequences  of 
things,  and  would  believe  nothing  till  it  actually  happened. 
The  fog  and  haze  in  which  he  saw  everything  communicated 
itself  to  others ;  and  the  total  indistinctness  and  uncertainty 
of  his  own  ideas  tended  to  confound  the  perceptions  of  his 
hearers  more  effectually  than  the  most  ingenious  misrepre- 
sentation could  have  done.  Indeed,  in  defending  his  con- 
duct, he  never  seemed  to  consider  himself  as  at  all  responsible 
for  the  success  of  his  measures,  or  to  suppose  that  future 
events  were  in  our  own  power ;  but  that,  as  the  best  laid 
schemes  might  fail,  and  there  was  no  providing  against  all 
possible  contingencies,  this  was  a  sufficient  excuse  for  our 
plunging  at  once  into  any  dangerous  or  absurd  enterprise 
without  the  least  regard  to  consequences.  .  .  .  Nothing 
could  ever  drive  him  out  of  his  dull  forms  and  naked  gener- 
alities, which,  as  they  are  susceptible  neither  of  degree  nor 
variation,  are  therefore  equally  applicable  to  every  emer- 
gency that  can  happen ;  and  in  the  most  critical  aspect  of 
affairs  he  saw  nothing  but  the  same  flimsy  web  of  remote 
possibilities  and  metaphysical  uncertainty.  In  his  mind  the 
wholesome  pulp  of  practical  wisdom  and  salutary  advice  was 
immediately  converted  into  the  dry  chaff  and  husks  of  a 
miserable  logic.  From  his  manner  of  reasoning,  he  seemed 
not  to  have  believed  that  the  truth  of  his  statements  depended 
on  the  reality  of  the  facts,  but  that  the  facts  themselves 
depended  on  the  order  in  which  he  arranged  them  in  words. 
You  would  not  suppose  him  to  be  agitating  a  serious  ques- 
tion, which  had  real  grounds  to  go  upon,  but  to  be  declaim- 
ing upon  an  imaginary  thesis,  proposed  as  an  exercise  in  the 
schools.  He  never  set  himself  to  examine  the  force  of  the 
objections  that  were  brought  against  him,  or  attempted  to 
defend  his  measures  upon  clear,  solid  grounds  of  his  own ; 
but  constantly  contented  himself  with  first  gravely  stating 
the  logical  form,  or  dilemma  to  which  the  question  reduced 
itself ;  and  then,  after  having  declared  his  opinion,  proceeded 
to  amuse  his  hearers  by  a  series  of  rhetorical  commonplaces, 
connected  together  in  grave,  sonorous,  and  elaborately  con- 


v.]       FIRST  BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,    AND  LONDON       79 

structed  periods,  without  ever  showing  their  real  application 
to  the  subject  in  dispute.  Thus,  if  any  member  of  the  oppo- 
sition disapproved  of  any  measure,  and  enforced  his  objec- 
tions by  pointing  out  the  many  evils  with  which  it  was 
fraught,  or  the  difficulties  attending  its  execution,  his  only 
answer  was  '  that  it  was  true  there  might  be  inconveniences 
attending  the  measure  proposed,  but  we  were  to  remember 
that  every  expedient  that  could  be  devised  might  be  said  to 
be  nothing  more  than  a  choice  of  difficulties,  and  that  all 
that  human  prudence  could  do  was  to  consider  on  which  side 
the  advantages  lay ;  that,  for  his  part,  he  conceived  that 
the  present  measure  was  attended  with  more  advantages  and 
fewer  disadvantages  than  any  other  that  could  be  adopted ; 
that  if  we  were  diverted  from  our  object  by  every  appear- 
ance of  difficulty,  the  wheels  of  government  would  be  clogged 
by  endless  delays  and  imaginary  grievances ;  that  most  of 
the  objections  made  to  the  measure  appeared  to  him  to  be 
trivial,  others  of  them  unfounded  and  improbable ;  or  that, 
if  a  scheme,  free  from  all  these  objections,  could  be  proposed, 
it  might,  after  all,  prove  inefficient ;  while,  in  the  meantime, 
a  material  object  remained  unprovided  for,  or  the  opportunity 
of  action  was  lost.'  ...  He  has  not  left  behind  him  a  single 
memorable  saying  —  not  one  profound  maxim,  one  solid  ob- 
servation, one  forcible  description,  one  beautiful  thought,  one 
humorous  picture,  one  affecting  sentiment.  He  has  made  no 
addition  whatever  to  the  stock  of  human  knowledge.  He 
did  not  possess  any  one  of  those  faculties  which  contribute 
to  the  instruction  and  delight  of  mankind  —  depth  of  under- 
standing, imagination,  sensibility,  wit,  vivacity,  clear  and 
solid  judgment." 

If  this  be  not  true  of  Pitt,  it  is,  at  any  rate,  true  of 
other  practitioners  in  the  same  way  of  business. 

The  year  1807  was  a  busy  year  in  Hazlitt's  life. 
He  expended  much  time  upon,  and  took  great  pains 
with,  an  abridgment  of  Abraham  Tucker's  Light  of 
Nature  Pursued.  Tucker's  book  is  a  discursive  but 
original  work  in  seven  large  volumes,  which  have  been 


80  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

more  praised  than  read,  and  more  often  pilfered  from 
than  quoted.  These  seven  volumes  Hazlitt,  by  mas- 
terly compression,  reduced  to  one.  Johnson  was  again 
its  publisher;  and  Mackintosh,  when  compiling  his 
dissertation  for  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  "  On  the 
Progress  of  Ethical  Philosophy,"  took  occasion  to 
praise  Hazlitt's  preface.  In  this  preface  Tucker  is 
described  in  terms  which  have  always  reminded  me 
of  Mr.  Bagehot :  — 

"  To  the  ingenuity  and  closeness  of  the  metaphysician  he 
unites  the  practical  knowledge  of  the  man  of  the  world  and 
the  utmost  sprightliness  and  even  levity  of  imagination.  He 
is  the  only  philosopher  who  appears  to  have  had  his  senses 
always  about  him,  or  to  have  possessed  the  enviable  faculty 
of  attending  at  the  same  time  to  what  was  passing  in  his 
own  mind  and  what  was  going  on  without  him.  He  applied 
everything  to  the  purposes  of  philosophy ;  he  could  not  see 
anything,  the  most  familiar  objects  or  the  commonest  events, 
without  connecting  them  with  the  illustration  of  some  diffi- 
cult problem ;  the  tricks  of  a  young  kitten,  or  a  little  child 
at  play,  were  sure  to  suggest  to  him  some  useful  observation 
or  nice  distinction." 

This  passage  not  only  reminds  me  of  Mr.  Bagehot, 
but  of  a  good  many  passages  in  Mr.  Bagehot's  books. 

Hazlitt  was  also  engaged  this  same  year  in  making 
a  selection  from  great  Parliamentary  speakers,  called 
The  Eloquence  of  the  British  Senate,  to  which  he  added 
biographical  and  critical  notes.  This  is  a  better  known 
book  than  the  abridgment  of  Tucker ;  and  the  sketches 
it  contains  of  the  characters  of  Chatham,  Burke,  and 
Fox  are  full  of  insight,  vivacity,  and  fervour.  Hazlitt 
afterwards  reprinted  these  characters  in  his  Political 
Essays  (1819). 


v.]      FIRST  BOOKS,    MARRIAGE,   AND  LONDON       81 

How  quickly  Hazlitt  found  his  style  after  he  had 
purged  his  bosom  of  the  perilous  stuff  of  metaphysics 
is  well  illustrated  by  the  third  book  he  published, 
anonymously,  like  the  others,  during  1807.  I  mean 
his  Reply  to  the  Essay  on  Population  by  the  Rev.  T.  R. 
Malthus  in  a  Series  of  Letters. 

This  book  is  composed  in  a  flowery,  almost  volup- 
tuous vein,  and  lacks  the  control  usually  characteristic 
of  Hazlitt's  style,  outspoken  and  personal  though  that 
style  may  be ;  but  the  reader  certainly  notices  in  this 
Reply  to  Malthus  the  opening  of  the  floodgates  of 
Hazlitt's  rhetoric :  — 

"  I  never  fell  in  love  but  once,  then  it  was  with  a  girl  who 
always  wore  her  handkerchief  pinned  tight  round  her  neck, 
with  a  fair  face,  gentle  eyes,  a  soft  smile,  and  cool  auburn 
locks.  It  was  not  a  raging  heat,  a  fever  in  the  veins ;  but 
it  was  like  a  vision,  a  dream  like  thoughts  of  childhood,  an 
everlasting  hope,  a  distant  joy,  a  heaven,  a  world  that  might 
be.  The  dream  is  still  left,  and  sometimes  comes  confusedly 
over  me,  in  solitude  and  silence,  and  mingles  with  the  soft- 
ness of  the  sky,  and  veils  my  eye  from  mortal  grossness." 

An  answer  to  Malthus  indeed:  akin  to  Carlyle's 
more  manly  strain,  "  Pretty  Sally  in  my  Alley  proves 
too  much  for  stout  John  in  yours." 

The  book  concludes  in  a  nobler  spirit,  with  a  passage 
which  pleases,  as  does  Newman's  eloquence,  by  its 
mingled  force  and  feeling,  pith  and  pity :  — 

"  I  have  thus  attempted  to  answer  the  different  points  of 
Mr.  Malthus's  argument,  and  give  a  truer  account  of  the 
various  principles  that  actuate  human  nature.  There  is  but 
one  advantage  that  I  can  conceive  of  as  resulting  from  the 
admission  of  his  mechanical  theory  on  the  subject,  which  is 


82  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

that  it  would  be  the  most  effectual  recipe  for  indifference  that 
has  yet  been  found  out.  No  one  need  give  himself  any 
farther  trouble  about  the  progress  of  vice  or  the  extension  of 
misery.  The  office  of  moral  censor,  that  troublesome,  uneasy 
office  which  every  one  is  so  ready  to  set  up  in  his  own  breast, 
which  I  verily  believe  is  the  occasion  of  more  unhappiness 
than  any  one  cause  else,  would  be  at  an  end.  The  professor's 
chair  of  morality  would  become  vacant,  and  no  one  would 
have  more  cause  than  I  to  rejoice  at  the  breaking  up  for  the 
holidays ;  for  I  have  plagued  myself  a  good  deal  about  the 
distinctions  of  right  and  wrong.  The  pilot  might  let  go 
the  helm  and  leave  the  vessel  to  drift  carelessly  before  the 
stream.  When  we  are  once  convinced  that  the  degree  of 
virtue  and  happiness  can  no  more  be  influenced  by  human 
wisdom  than  the  ebbing  and  flowing  of  the  tide,  it  must  be 
idle  to  give  ourselves  any  more  concern  about  them.  The 
wise  man  might  then  enjoy  an  Epicurean  languor  and  repose 
without  being  conscious  of  the  neglect  of  duty.  Mr.  Mal- 
thus's  system  is  one,  '  in  which  the  wicked  cease  from  troub- 
ling, and  in  which  the  weary  are  at  rest.'  To  persons  of  an 
irritable  and  nervous  disposition,  who  are  fond  of  kicking 
against  the  pricks,  who  have  tasted  of  the  bitterness  of  the 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  and  to  whom  whatever  is  amiss 
in  others  sticks  not  merely  like  a  burr,  but  like  a  pitch 
plaister,  the  advantage  of  such  a  system  is  incalculable. 

"  Happy  are  they  who  live  in  the  dream  of  their  own  exist- 
ence and  see  all  things  in  the  light  of  their  own  minds ;  who 
walk  by  faith  and  hope,  not  by  knowledge ;  to  whom  the 
guiding-star  of  their  youth  still  shines  from  afar,  and  into 
whom  the  spirit  of  the  world  has  not  entered  !  They  have 
not  been  '  hurt  by  the  archers,'  nor  has  the  iron  entered  their 
souls.  They  live  in  the  midst  of  arrows  and  of  death,  un- 
conscious of  harm.  The  evil  thing  comes  not  nigh  them. 
The  shafts  of  ridicule  pass  unheeded  by,  and  malice  loses  its 
sting.  Their  keen  perceptions  do  not  catch  at  hidden  mis- 
chiefs, nor  cling  to  every  folly.  The  example  of  vice  does 
not  rankle  in  their  breasts,  like  the  poisoned  shirt  of  Nessus. 
Evil  impressions  fall  off  from  them,  like  drops  of  water.  The 
yoke  of  life  is  to  them  light  and  supportable.  The  world  has 


v.]      FIRST   BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,   AND  LONDON        83 

no  hold  on  them.     They  are  in  it,  not  of  it ;  and  a  dream  and 
a  glory  is  ever  about  them." 

With  Hazlitt's  argument  against  Malthus  the  reader 
will  not  wish  me  to  concern  myself ;  but  my  duty  com- 
pels me  to  say  that  one  of  the  points  made  against 
Malthus  he  conceived  to  be  original,  and  somewhat 
jealously  guarded  against  De  Quincey,  who  had  picked 
it  up  by  the  way.  Malthus,  in  Hazlitt's  words, 
"  made  a  monster  of  the  principle  of  population,"  and 
in  the  words  of  Coleridge,  "wrote  a  quarto  volume 
to  prove  that  man  could  not  live  without  eating,"  a 
proposition  by  no  means  so  terrible  in  itself  but  that, 
in  order  to  drive  his  monster  home  to  men's  bosoms, 
it  was  necessary  for  Malthus  to  promulgate  the  prop- 
osition that  whilst  the  species  who  live  by  eating 
increase  in  a  geometrical  ratio,  the  means  of  their 
subsistence  increase  only  in  an  arithmetical  ratio. 
Hence  the  gloom  of  the  situation.  But,  said  Hazlitt, 
this  is  only  true  when  the  whole  earth  is  under 
culivation.  "  A  grain  of  corn  has  the  same  or  greater 
power  of  propagating  its  species  than  a  man  has  till 
there  is  no  longer  any  room  for  it  to  grow  or  spread 
further."  Longmans  published  the  book. 

None  of  these  efforts  can  have  brought  much  grist 
to  the  mill ;  but  as  Hazlitt  continued  to  divide  his  time 
between  his  father's  house  at  Wem  and  his  brother's 
studio  in  London,  his  expenses  cannot  have  been  great, 
for  he  was  never  an  extravagant  man. 

His  friendship  with  Lamb  at  this  time  was  at  its 
height,  and  he  seldom  missed  a  Wednesday  evening 
in  Mitre  Court,  when  Lamb's  talk  was  like  "snap- 
dragon" and  his  own  "like  a  game  of  ninepins." 


84  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

In  Mr.  W.  C.  Hazlitt's  pleasant  little  book  Lamb  and 
Hazlitt  (1900)  he  supplies  the  history  of  an  elaborate 
hoax  or  "mystification"  of  the  kind  in  which  Elia 
ever  delighted,  practised  upon  Hazlitt  about  this  time, 
into  the  humour  of  which  the  latter  fully  entered,  and 
played  up  to  with  the  utmost  spirit.  The  jest  turned 
upon  a  report  circulated  by  Lamb  and  Joseph  Hnme 
of  the  Victualling  Office,  Somerset  House,  "that 
W.  H.,  a  portrait  painter  in  Southampton  Buildings, 
Holborn,  put  an  end  to  his  existence  by  cutting  his 
throat  in  a  shocking  manner,"  and  gruesome  details 
follow.  Thereupon  Hazlitt  prepared  and  presented  a 
lengthy  Petition  and  Kemonstrance  protesting  against 
the  report,  and  seeking  to  establish  the  fact  of  his 
continued  existence  by  setting  out  in  twelve  para- 
graphs his  manner  of  life,  and  concluding  thus:  — 

"  With  all  the  sincerity  of  a  man  doubtful  between  life  and 
death,  the  petitioner  declares  that  he  looks  upon  the  said 
Charles  Lamb  as  the  ringleader  in  this  unjust  conspiracy 
against  him,  and  as  the  sole  cause  and  author  of  the  jeopardy 
he  is  in ;  but  that  as  losers  have  leave  to  speak,  he  must  say 
that,  if  it  were  not  for  a  poem  he  wrote  on  Tobacco  about  two 

years  ago,  a  farce  called  Mr.  H he  brought  out  last  winter 

with  more  wit  than  discretion  in  it,  some  prologues  and 
epilogues  he  has  since  written  with  good  success,  and  some 
lively  notes  he  is  at  present  writing  on  dead  authors,  he  sees 
no  reason  why  he  should  not  be  considered  as  much  a  dead 
man  as  himself,  and  the  undertaker  spoken  to  accordingly. 
"  A  true  copy. 

"W.  HAZLITT. 

"Dated  Sunday,  the  10th  of  Jany. 
"  1808." 

Lamb  and  Hume  affected  to  treat  this  petition  as 
either  a  forgery  or  a  ghostly  communication,  and 


v.]      FIRST  BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,   AND  LONDON        85 

about  it  Lamb  descants  in  a  style  that  is  now  the 
delight  of  two  continents.  After  first  remarking  that 
the  reason  most  commonly  assigned  for  the  reappear- 
ance of  disembodied  spirits  is  the  revealing  of  hoarded 
treasure,  he  proceeds :  — 

"  It  is  highly  improbable  that  he  should  have  accumulated 
any  such  vast  treasures,  for  the  revealing  of  which  a  miracle 
was  needed,  without  some  suspicion  of  the  fact  among  his 
friends  during  his  lifetime.  I  for  my  part  always  looked  upon 
our  dear  friend  as  a  man  rich  rather  in  the  gifts  of  his  mind 
than  in  earthly  treasures.  He  had  few  rents  or  comings  in 
that  I  was  ever  aware  of,  small  (if  any)  landed  property ;  and 
by  all  that  I  could  witness,  he  subsisted  more  upon  the  well- 
timed  contributions  of  a  few  chosen  friends  who  knew  his 
worth  than  upon  any  estate  which  could  properly  be  called 
his  own.  I  myself  have  contributed  my  part.  God  knows, 
I  speak  not  this  in  reproach.  I  have  never  taken,  nor  indeed 
did  the  deceased  offer,  any  written  acknoivledgments  of  the 
various  sums  which  he  has  had  of  me,  by  which  I  could  make 
the  fact  manifest  to  the  legal  eye  of  an  executor  or  adminis- 
trator. He  was  not  a  man  to  affect  these  niceties  in  his 
transactions  with  his  friends.  He  would  often  say  money 
was  nothing  between  intimate  acquaintances;  that  golden 
streams  had  no  ebb ;  that  God  loved  a  cheerful  giver ;  that 
a  paid  loan  makes  angels  groan,  with  many  such  like  sayings. 
He  had  always  free  and  generous  notions  about  money.  His 
nearest  friends  know  this  best.  Induced  by  these  considera- 
tions, I  give  up  that  commonly  received  notion  of  Revealable 
Treasures  in  our  friend's  case.  Neither  am  I  too  forward  to 
adopt  that  vulgar  superstition  of  some  hidden  murder  to  be 
brought  to  light,  which  yet  I  do  not  universally  reject ;  for 
when  I  resolve  that  the  defunct  was  naturally  of  a  discour- 
sible  and  communicative  temper  (though  of  a  gloomy  and  close 
aspect,  as  born  under  Saturn),  a  great  repeater  of  conversations, 
which  he  generally  carried  away  verbatim,  and  would  repeat 
with  syllabic  exactness  in  the  next  company  where  he  was 
received  (by  which  means,  I  that  have  stayed  at  home,  have 


86  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

often  reaped  the  profit  of  his  travels  without  stirring  from  my 
elbow  chair),  I  cannot  think  that  if  he  had  been  present  at 
so  remarkable  a  circumstance  as  a  murder  he  would  so  soon 
have  forgotten  it  as  to  make  no  mention  of  it  at  the  next 
place  where  he  dined  or  supped,  or  that  he  could  have  re- 
strained himself  from  giving  the  particulars  of  a  matter  of 
fact  like  that  in  his  lifetime.  I  am  sure  I  have  often  heard 
him  dilate  upon  occurrences  of  a  much  less  interesting  sort 
than  that  in  question.  I  am  most  inclined  to  support  that 
opinion  which  favours  the  establishing  of  some  speculative 
point  in  religion  :  a  frequent  cause,  says  Wierus,  for  spirits 
returning  to  the  earth  to  confute  Atheists,  etc.,  when  I  con- 
sider the  education  which  our  friend  received  from  a  venerable 
parent,  his  religious  destination,  his  nurture  at  a  seminary 
appropriated  to  young  ministers.  But  whatever  the  cause  of 
this  reappearance  may  prove  to  be,  we  may  now  with  truth 
assert  that  our  deceased  friend  had  attained  to  one  object  of 
his  pursuits,  one  hour's  separate  existence  gives  a  dead  man 
clearer  notions  of  metaphysics  than  all  the  treatises  which  in 
this  state  of  carnal  entanglement  the  least-immersed  spirit  can 
outspin." 

The  whole  story  should  be  read  in  the  little  book 
already  mentioned. 

At  an  earlier  date  than  this  mystification,  viz.  on  the 
10th  of  December  1806,  Hazlitt  had  sat  with  Lamb  in 
the  front  row  of  the  pit  in  Drury  Lane  when  another 
Mr.  H was  undeniably  damned  —  that  strange- 
fortuned  farce  which  lives  for  ever  in  the  hour  of  its 
shame.  Not  to  be  outdone  in  kindnesses,  Lamb  in 
his  turn,  namely,  on  Sunday  the  1st  of  May  1808, 
accompanied  Hazlitt  to  St.  Andrew's  Church,  Holborn, 
and  stood  by  and  saw  his  friend  married  to  Miss  Sarah 
Stoddart. 

Between  Mary  Lamb  and  Sarah  Stoddart  there  had 
long  been  friendship  ;  and  it  was  possibly  due  to  the 


v.]       FIRST  BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,   AND  LONDON       87 

offices  of  the  most  incomparable  of  old  maids  that  the 
marriage  of  Hazlitt  was  brought  about.  Miss  Stoddart 
was  not  romantic,  but  determined  to  be  married, 
though  with  a  settlement  upon  herself  and  her  issue 
of  her  cottages  at  Winterslow,  which  produced  the 
annual  sum  of  £120.  She  had  many  affairs  of  the 
heart,  all  of  which  she  discussed  in  a  business-like 
spirit  with  Miss  Lamb,  who  was  greatly  amused  with 
her  tales,  so  unlike  those  of  Shakespeare's  women. 
Miss  Stoddart's  letters  to  her  confidante  are  not  forth- 
coming ;  but  from  Miss  Lamb's  letters  to  her,  we  can 
still  dimly  discern  the  embarrassed  phantoms  of  a 
Mr.  Turner,  a  Mr.  White,  a  Mr.  Dowling,  and  a  certain 
"  William  "  of  partridge-shooting  proclivities,  all  on, 
and  then,  for  one  reason  or  another,  all  off.  But  Miss 
Stoddart's  mind  to  be  married  with  a  settlement 
remains  unchanged. 

Mary  Lamb,  in  a  letter  in  which  she  delicately 
inquires  what  her  friend  means  to  do  with  Mr.  Turner, 
introduces  the  name  of  William  Hazlitt.  She  writes : 
"  William  Hazlitt,  the  brother  of  him  you  know,  is  in 
town.  I  believe  you  have  heard  us  say  we  like  him. 
He  came  in  good  time,  for  the  loss  of  Manning  made 
Charles  very  dull,  and  he  likes  Hazlitt  better  than 
anybody  except  Manning." 

Hazlitt  and  Miss  Stoddart  were  probably  known  to 
one  another  before  the  date  of  this  letter;  for,  as 
already  mentioned,  in  1799,  Hazlitt  and  John  Stoddart 
were  friendly. 

How  the  matter  was  actually  arranged  is  not  known, 
though  we  hear  of  John  Hazlitt's  being  "  mightily 
pleased  " ;  but  not  so  John  Stoddart,  on  whom  Hazlitt 
now  looked  sourly,  for  he  had  married  a  clergyman's 


88  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

daughter  and  abandoned  the  abstract  principles  of  the 
French  Revolution,  spoke  well  of  legitimate  monarchs, 
and  would  no  longer  drink  confusion  to  the  Holy 
Alliance.  Miss  Lamb  was  full  of  sympathy,  though 
she  had  her  doubts,  as  may  be  perceived  from  the 
following  letter,  or  end  of  a  letter  addressed  to  Miss 
Stoddart :  — 

"  Farewell !  Determine  as  wisely  as  you  can  in  regard  to 
Hazlitt ;  and  if  your  determination  is  to  have  him,  Heaven 
send  you  many  happy  years  together.  If  I  am  not  mis- 
taken, I  have  concluded  letters  on  the  Corydon  courtship 
with  this  same  wish.  I  hope  it  is  not  ominous  of  change ; 
for  if  I  were  sure  you  would  not  be  quite  starved  to  death, 
nor  beaten  to  a  mummy,  I  should  like  to  see  Hazlitt  and 
you  come  together,  if  (as  Charles  observes)  it  were  only  for 
the  joke  sake." 

Of  Hazlitt's  prse-nuptial  letters  to  Miss  Stoddart  but 
one  survives.  I  give  part  of  it :  — 

"  Tuesday  night. 

"  MY  DEAR  LOVE,  —  Above  a  week  has  passed,  and  I 
have  received  no  letter  —  not  one  of  those  letters  '  in  which 
I  live,  or  have  no  life  at  all.'  What  is  become  of  you? 
Are  you  married,  hearing  that  I  was  dead  (for  so  it  has  been 
reported)  1  Or  are  you  gone  into  a  nunnery  1  Or  are  you 
fallen  in  love  with  some  of  the  amorous  heroes  of  Boccaccio  ? 
Which  of  them  is  it  ?  Is  it  with  Cymon,  who  was  trans- 
formed from  a  clown  into  a  lover,  and  learned  to  spell  by  the 
force  of  beauty?  Or  with  Lorenzo,  the  lover  of  Isabella, 
whom  her  three  brethren  hated  (as  your  brother  does  me), 
who  was  a  merchant's  clerk  ?  Or  with  Federigo  Alberigi, 
an  honest  gentleman,  who  ran  through  his  fortune,  and  won 
his  mistress  by  cooking  a  fair  falcon  for  her  dinner,  though 
it  was  the  only  means  he  had  left  of  getting  a  dinner  for 
himself?  This  last  is  the  man;  and  I  am  the  more  per- 


v.]      FIRST  BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,   AND  LONDON       89 

suaded  of  it,  because  I  think  I  won  your  good  liking  myself 
by  giving  you  an  entertainment  —  of  sausages,  when  -I  had 
no  money  to  buy  them  with.  Nay  now,  never  deny  it ! 
Did  not  I  ask  your  consent  that  very  night  after,  and  did 
you  not  give  it  ?  Well,  I  should  be  confoundedly  jealous  of 
those  fine  gallants  if  I  did  not  know  that  a  living  dog  is 
better  than  a  dead  lion ;  though,  now  I  think  of  it,  Boccaccio 
does  not  in  general  make  much  of  his  lovers  —  it  is  his  women 
who  are  so  delicious.  I  almost  wish  I  had  lived  in  those 
times,  and  had  been  a  little  more  amiable.  Now  if  a 
woman  had  written  the  book,  it  would  not  have  had  this 
effect  upon  me ;  the  men  would  have  been  heroes  and  angels, 
and  the  women  nothing  at  all.  Isn't  there  some  truth  in 
that?  Talking  of  departed  loves,  I  met  my  old  flame  the 
other  day  in  the  street.  I  did  dream  of  her  one  night  since, 
and  only  one ;  every  other  night  I  have  had  the  same  dream 
I  have  had  for  these  two  months  past.  Now,  if  you  are  at 
all  reasonable,  this  will  satisfy  you.  .  .  .  For,  indeed,  I 
never  love  you  so  well  as  when  I  think  of  sitting  down  with 
you  to  dinner  on  a  boiled  scrag-end  of  mutton  and  hot  pota- 
toes. You  please  my  fancy  more  then  than  when  I  think 
of  you  in — no,  you  would  never  forgive  me  if  I  were  to 
finish  the  sentence.  Now  I  think  of  it,  what  do  you  mean 
to  be  dressed  in  when  we  are  married?  But  it  does  not 
much  matter !  I  wish  you  would  let  your  hair  grow ;  though 
perhaps  nothing  will  be  better  than  '  the  same  air  and  look 
with  which  first  my  heart  was  took.'  But  now  to  business. 
I  mean  soon  to  call  upon  your  brother  in  form,  namely,  as 
soon  as  I  get  quite  well,  which  I  hope  to  do  in  about  another 
fortnight ;  and  then  I  hope  you  will  come  up  by  the  coach 
as  fast  as  the  horses  can  carry  you,  for  I  long  mightily  to  be 
in  your  ladyship's  presence  —  to  vindicate  my  character.  I 
think  you  had  better  sell  the  small  house  —  I  mean  that  at 
4.10  —  and  I  will  borrow  .£100.  So  that  we  shall  set  off 
merrily  in  spite  of  all  the  prudence  of  Edinburgh.  —  Good- 
bye, little  dear  !  W.  H. 

"  Miss  STODDABT, 
"Winterslow,  Salisbury,  Wilts." 


90  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

The  only  guests  known  to  be  at  Hazlitt's  wedding 
were  John  Stoddart,  commonly  called  Dr.  Stoddart, 
and  his  wife,  and  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb.  Charles, 
as  his  wont  was  on  solemn  occasions,  laughed  so  loudly 
that  he  was  like  to  be  turned  out  several  times  during 
the  ceremony. 

Mrs.  Hazlitt  carried  her  black-browed  lord  off  to 
one  of  her  Winterslow  cottages.  Winterslow  is  a 
small  village  some  seven  miles  from  Salisbury  on  the 
Andover  Road.  Stonehenge  is  nine  miles  off.  Hazlitt 
loved  Salisbury  Plain,  whose  undulating  slopes,  show- 
ing "  the  earth  in  its  primeval  simplicity,  bare  with 
naked  breasts,  varied  only  by  the  shadows  of  the  clouds 
that  pass  across  it,"  loom  large  and  fade  mistily  away 
into  the  horizon  of  many  of  his  word  pictures. 

A  New  and  Improved  Grammar  of  the  English  Tongue, 
for  the  Use  of  Schools,  containing  though  it  is  said  to 
do  sentiments  respecting  the  substantive  and  adjective, 
and  new  and  ingenious  remarks  on  the  verb,  seems 
hardly  the  occupation  for  a  sentimentalist  during  the 
first  months  of  married  life ;  but  Hazlitt  was  as  angry 
with  the  blindness  and  obstinacy  of  Lindley  Murray 
as  ever  he  was  with  the  atrocities  of  Malthus,  or  of 
those  philosophers  who  would  have  us  believe  that  we 
could  be  innately  selfish  with  regard  to  the  future. 
Grammar  has  its  fascinations;  and  even  such  men 
as  John  Milton  and  John  Wesley,  no  less  than 
William  Cobbett  and  William  Hazlitt,  succumbed  to 
its  charms. 

Hazlitt's  Grammar  did  not  find  a  publisher  till  1810, 
and  never  found  its  way  into  schools  at  all,  where 
Lindley  Murray,  in  spite  of  Home  Tooke  and  Hazlitt, 
continued  to  teach  that  a  noun  is  the  name  of  a  thing. 


v.]      FIRST  BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,   AND  LONDON       91 

"  Is  Quackery  a  thing,  i.e.  a  substance  ?  "  cries  Hazlitt 
in  his  wrath. 

Painting  as  a  recreation  was  not  wholly  abandoned 
during  these  years ;  for  in  1809  Hazlitt  was  working 
"like  Satan"  at  a  picture  of  "Jacob's  Ladder,"  a 
subject  which  had  always  attracted  him.  In  a  long 
and  pleasant  letter  to  his  wife,  printed  in  Lamb  and 
Hazlitt  (1900),  he  describes  himself  as  "  sometimes 
glazing  and  sometimes  scumbling,  as  it  happens,  now 
on  the  wrong  side  of  the  canvas  and  now  on  the  right, 
but  still  persuading  myself  that  I  have  at  last  found 
out  the  true  secret  of  Titian's  golden  hue  and  the 
oleaginous  touches  of  Claude  Lorraine.  I  have  got  in 
a  pretty  good  background,  and  a  conception  of  the 
ladder  which  I  learned  from  the  upping  stone  on  the 
down,  only  making  the  stone  into  gold,  and  a  few 
other  improvements.  I  have  no  doubt  there  was  such 
another  on  the  field  of  Luz,  and  that  an  upping  stone 
is  the  genuine  Jacob's  ladder.  But  where  are  the 
angels  to  come  from?  That's  another  question,  which 
I  am  not  yet  able  to  solve.  My  dear  Sarah,  I  am  too 
tired  and  too  dull  to  be  witty,  and  therefore  I  will  not 
attempt  it." 

In  October  1809  the  Lambs  paid  the  Hazlitts  a  visit 
at  Winterslow  that  long  lived  in  all  their  memories. 
"  I  used  to  walk  out  at  this  time  with  Mr.  and  Miss 
Lamb  of  an  evening,  and  look  at  the  Claude  Lorraine 
skies  over  our  heads  melting  from  azure  into  purple 
and  gold,  and  to  gather  mushrooms  that  sprang  up  at 
our  feet,  to  throw  into  our  hashed  mutton  at  supper." 
Of  Lamb  in  the  country  he  makes  the  quotation  that 
he  was  "  like  the  most  capricious  poet  Ovid  among  the 
Goths."  Hazlitt  took  his  delightful  guests  to  Oxford, 


02  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

where  he  expanded  in  the  Bodleian,  and  to  Blenheim, 
where  he  was  a  cicerone  to  the  pictures ;  but,  as  Crabb 
Robinson  told  Lamb  on  the  latter's  return  to  London, 
forgot  to  show  them  the  Titian  Gallery,  if  indeed  it 
would  have  been  shown  to  Mrs.  Hazlitt  and  Miss 
Lamb  —  such  was  the  delicacy  of  the  noble  proprietor. 
This  visit  inspired  one  of  the  first  of  the  essays  of 
Elia,  "  Oxford  in  the  Vacation." 

Thomas  Holcroft,  the  author  of  that  excellent  piece 
The  Road  to  Ruin,  had  died  in  1809,  leaving  behind 
him  Memoirs,  the  editing  and  completing  of  which 
was  intrusted  to  Hazlitt,  who  by  the  end  of  1810  had 
three  volumes  (small  ones)  ready  for  the  press.  A 
fourth  is  said  still  to  remain  in  manuscript.  It  was 
difficult  to  find  or  agree  upon  a  publisher,  and  Mary 
Lamb  writes  to  Mrs.  Hazlitt  in  November  1810 :  "Mrs. 
Holcroft  still  goes  about  from  Nicholson  to  Tuthill, 
from  Tuthill  to  Godwin,  and  from  Godwin  to  Tuthill, 
and  from  Tuthill  to  Nicholson,  to  consult  on  the 
publication  or  no-publication  of  that  good  man  her 
husband.  It  is  called  Tfie  Life  Everlasting.  How  does 
that  same  life  get  on  in  your  hands?"  The  three 
volumes  were  published  in  1816,  and  are  good  reading 
—  particularly  in  the  early  parts. 

Such  leisure  as  Hazlitt  had  at  this  time  he  devoted 
to  a  careful  study  of  Hobbes,  Berkeley,  Locke,  Butler, 
and  other  philosophers,  English  and  French,  for  he 
had  begun  to  meditate  a  history  of  English  philosophy. 

On  the  26th  of  September  1811  the  future  Registrar 
in  Bankruptcy  was  born,  the  second  child  of  the 
marriage,  the  firstborn  having  died  at  Winterslow  in 
July  1809. 

Nobody's  birth,  not  even  the  Child  Angel's  in  the 


v.]       FIRST  BOOKS,   MARRIAGE,   AND  LONDON       93 

essay  of  Elia,  was  ever  made  the  subject  of  pleasanter 
congratulations  than  those  which  reached  Winterslow 
from  the  Temple.  Miss  Lamb  wrote  to  the  mother, 
and  her  brother  to  the  father :  — 

"2  Oct.  1811,  Temple. 

"  MY  DEAR  SARAH,  —  I  have  been  a  long  time  anxiously 
expecting  the  happy  news  that  I  have  just  received.  I 
address  you  because,  as  the  letter  has  been  lying  some  days 
at  the  India  House,  I  hope  you  are  able  to  sit  up  and  read 
my  congratulations  on  the  little  live  boy  you  have  been  so 
many  years  wishing  for.  As  we  old  women  say,  '  May  he 
live  to  be  a  great  comfort  to  you.'  I  never  knew  an  event 
of  the  kind  that  gave  me  so  much  pleasure  as  the  little, 
long-looked-for,  come-at-last's  arrival ;  and  I  rejoice  to  hear 
his  honour  has  begun  to  suck.  The  word  was  not  distinctly 
written,  and  I  was  a  long  time  making  out  the  wholesome 
fact.  I  hope  to  hear  from  you  soon,  for  I  am  anxious  to 
know  if  your  nursing  labours  are  attended  with  any  diffi- 
culties. I  wish  you  a  happy  getting-up  and  a  merry 
christening. 

"  Charles  sends  his  love,  perhaps  though  he  will  write  a 
scrap  to  Hazlitt  at  the  end.  He  is  now  looking  over  me  ;  he 
is  always  in  my  way,  for  he  has  had  a  month's  holiday  at 
home ;  but  I  am  happy  to  say  they  end  on  Monday,  when 
mine  begin,  for  I  am  going  to  pass  a  week  at  Richmond  with 
Mrs.  Burney.  She  had  been  dying ;  but  she  went  to  the  Isle 
of  Wight  and  recovered  once  more.  When  there  I  intend  to 
read  novels  and  play  at  piquet  all  day  long.  —  Yours  truly, 

"  M.  LAMB." 

"  DEAR  HAZLITT,  —  I  cannot  help  accompanying  my 
sister's  congratulations  to  Sarah  with  some  of  my  own  to 
you  on  this  happy  occasion  of  a  man  child  being  born. 

"Delighted  fancy  already  sees  him  some  future  rich  alder- 
man or  opulent  merchant,  painting  perhaps  a  little  in  his 
leisure  hours  for  amusement,  like  the  late  H.  Bunbury,  Esq. 

"  Pray,  are  the  Winterslow  estates  entailed  ?     I  am  afraid 


94  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP.  v. 

lest  the  young  dog,  when  he  grows  up,  should  cut  down  the 
woods,  and  leave  no  groves  for  widows  to  take  their  lonesome 
solace  in.  The  Wera  estate,  of  course,  can  only  devolve  on 
him  in  case  of  your  brother  leaving  no  male  issue. 

"  Well,  my  blessing  and  Heaven's  be  upon  him,  and  make 
him  like  his  father,  with  something  of  a  better  temper  and  a 
smoother  head  of  hair;  and  then  all  the  men  and  women 
must  love  him. 

"  Martin  and  the  card-boys  join  in  congratulations.  Love 
to  Sarah.  Sorry  we  are  not  within  caudle-shot. 

"C.  LAMB." 

A  few  months  after  the  child's  birth  the  Hazlitts 
came  to  live  in  London. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    BEGINNING   OF    STRIFE 

HAZLITT  was  thirty-four  years  of  age  when  he  first 
settled  in  London  to  earn  a  living  for  himself  and  his 
family.  Hitherto  he  had  led,  though  not  a  cloistered, 
yet  a  solitary  life,  free  from  responsibility,  and  he  had 
been  for  the  most  part  at  liberty  to  chew  the  cud  of  his 
own  thoughts,  to  direct  the  course  of  his  own  studies, 
and  to  write  as  much  or  as  little  as  he  liked.  His 
good  old  father  at  Wem  and  his  good-natured  brother 
in  Great  Russell  Street  were  always  glad  to  see  him 
and  give  him  board  and  lodging  in  exchange  for  his 
society.  Although  already  an  author  in  1812,  except 
for  his  "  Character  of  Pitt,"  which  was  inspired  by,  not 
to  say  borrowed  from,  Coleridge,  some  spirited  notes  to 
his  compilation  of  speeches,  and  a  nutter  of  the  wing 
in  his  Reply  to  Malthus  and  in  his  Preface  to  Tucker, 
he  had  written  nothing  in  the  style  and  manner  now 
soon  to  be  known  as  his. 

He  was  not  at  any  time  a  man  of  many  friendships. 
His  manners  were  not  good,  his  temper  had  become 
uncertain,  and  despite  his  sentiment  he  had  not  a 
warm  heart.  If  any  one  insisted  upon  shaking  hands 
with  him,  he  held  out  something  (so  Leigh  Hunt  com- 
plained) like  the  fin  of  a  fish.  His  political  opinions 
were  decidedly  unpopular;  for  though  he  had  never 
shared  the  rhapsodical  dreams  of  Coleridge,  the  ex- 

95 


96  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

travagant  hopes  of  Wordsworth,  or  the  petulant  sedi- 
tion of  Southey  and  Landor,  he  had  rejoiced  with  a 
fierce  joy  over  the  disgrace  of  the  Bourbons,  and 

"  When  to  whelm  the  disenchanted  nation, 
Like  fiends  embattled  by  a  wizard's  wand, 
The  monarchs  marched  in  evil  day 
And  Britain  joined  the  dire  array," 

Hazlitt  was  darkly  furious.  On  no  one's  eyes  did  the 
beams  of  "  the  sun  of  Austerlitz  "  pour  more  resistless 
day;  and  when  that  sun  for  ever  set,  his  heart  was 
near  breaking.  Talfourd  tells  us  how  Hazlitt  stag- 
gered under  the  blow  of  Waterloo ;  for  he  had  accepted 
Bonaparte  not  merely  as  the  Child  of  the  Revolution, 
but  as  the  Champion  of  Freedom  ;  and  to  him  the  Holy 
Alliance  was  a  conspiracy  of  stupid  monarchs  against 
the  abstract  rights  of  the  people,  and  Hazlitt  never 
found  it  difficult  to  connect  a  cause  with  a  person. 
He  had  followed  Bonaparte's  career  "like  a  lover," 
had  watched  him  trample  on  the  pride  of  old  royal 
houses  with  malicious  glee.  To  witness  his  disgrace 
and  captivity  wrought  "  like  madness  in  the  brain." 
Nor  was  his  temper  improved  by  being  condemned  to 
witness  the  somewhat  smug  recantations  of  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  Southey,  and  a  host  of  lesser  men, 
who  having  indulged  in  vagaries  of  opinion  and  vio- 
lence of  revolutionary  language  far  transcending  any 
of  his,  were  now  to  be  heard  like  a  congregation  of 
rooks  cawing  round  the  old  steeple.  He  exclaims  in 
a  splenetic  note  to  his  essay  on  "  Patronage  and  Puff- 
ing "  :  "I  have  endured  all  this  marching  and  counter- 
marching of  poets  and  philosophers  over  my  head  as 
well  as  I  could  'like  the  camomile  that  thrives  the 


vi.]  THE  BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE  97 

more  'tis  trodden  upon.'  By  Heavens !  I  think  I'll 
endure  it  no  more." 

A  man  of  Hazlitt's  temper  and  opinions,  and  with 
the  gifts  of  expression  now  discovered  to  be  his,  was 
not  likely  to  live  at  peace  with  his  fellow-men,  circa 
1812-1820. 

He  began  peacefully  enough  by  setting  up  his 
establishment  in  No.  19  York  Street,  Westminster, 
then  a  comfortable  red-brick  house  with  a  small 
garden  in  front,  and  one  of  the  numerous  London 
residences  of  John  Milton. 

In  19  York  Street  Milton  lived  for  six  memorable 
years  from  1652  to  1658.  Here  his  first  wife  died, 
likewise  his  "  late  espoused  saint " ;  here  he  became 
totally  blind ;  here  he  wrote  his  Second  Defence,  pro 
populo  Anglicano,  perhaps  the  best  example  of  that 
prose  style  that  prompted  Lander's  remark  that  there 
was  as  much  poetry  in  Milton's  prose  as  there  was 
prose  in  Wordsworth's  poetry ;  here  also  he  composed 
that  "  soul-animating  strain,"  his  sonnet  on  The  Late 
Massacre  in  Piedmont,  and  five  other  of  his  sonnets, 
including  the  one  to  the  "Memory  of  his  Second 
Wife  "  ;  here  also  he  began  Paradise  Lost ;  and  here  he 
remained  until  the  Restoration  led  him  to  lie  hid  for  a 
season  in  Bartholomew  Close,  nor  did  he  after  the  Act 
of  Oblivion  and  Indemnity  return  to  York  Street. 

In  Hazlitt's  time  the  house  was  the  property  of  that 
tough  old  Reformer,  Jeremy  Bentham,  who  lived  in  a 
mansion  with  a  large  garden  just  behind.  The  door 
of  No.  19  opened  into  a  square  hall  or  kitchen,  and 
Hazlitt  occupied  as  his  own  a  big  wainscoted  room, 
reputed  to  be  the  poet's,  upstairs,  with  two  windows 
overlooking  the  old  philosopher's  garden.  Hazlitt, 


98  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CUAP. 

finding  that  none  of  his  neighbours  knew  or  cared 
anything  about  Milton,  recorded  the  fact  that  the 
poet  had  lived  there  on  a  tablet  placed  over  the  front 
door  —  an  act  of  piety  and  devotion  then  rare. 

Hazlitt's  first  bit  of  work  in  London  was  to  deliver 
a  course  of  lectures  at  the  Russell  Institution  in 
Bloomsbury,  not  on  the  poets,  but  on  the  philosophers, 
his  subject  being  "  The  Eise  and  Progress  of  Modern 
Philosophy,  containing  an  Historical  and  Critical 
Account  of  the  Principal  Writers  who  have  treated  on 
Moral  and  Metaphysical  Subjects  from  the  time  of 
Lord  Bacon  to  the  Present  Day."  The  course  con- 
sisted of  ten  lectures,  of  which  large  fragments  remain, 
and  may  be  read  in  the  first  volume  of  The  Litera^ry 
Remains  (1836). 

In  the  lecture  on  Hobbes,  Hazlitt  referred  to  a 
prospectus  he  had  prepared  of  a  history  of  a  phi- 
losophy. Who  attended  these  lectures  or  any  of  them 
is  not  known,  but  they  were  well  worth  listening  to. 
Coleridge  had  set  the  fashion  of  lecturing,  and  was  at 
this  very  date,  January  1812,  finishing  a  course  on 
Shakespeare  and  Milton,  which  had  been  attended  by 
as  many  as  one  hundred  and  fifty  people  at  a  time ! 
Hazlitt  began  on  the  14th  of  January,  and  made  it 
his  business  to  combat  modern  philosophy,  by  which, 
as  he  understood  it,  all  thought  is  resolved  into  sensa- 
tion, all  morality  into  the  love  of  pleasure,  and  all 
actions  into  mechanical  impulse.  "  These  three  propo- 
sitions taken  together  embrace  almost  every  question 
relating  to  the  human  mind,  and  in  their  different 
ramifications  and  intersections  form  a  net  not  unlike 
that  used  by  the  enchanters  of  old,  which  whosoever 
has  once  thrown  over  him  will  find  all  his  efforts  to 


vi.]  THE  BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE  99 

escape  vain,  and  his  attempts  to  reason  freely  on  any 
subject  in  which  his  own  nature  is  concerned  baffled 
and  confounded  in  every  direction." 

For  Hobbes  and  Berkeley,  as  well  as  for  Bishop 
Butler's  Sermons  (not  the  Analogy),  Hazlitt  had  great 
reverence,  despite  strong  differences  of  opinion.  Of 
Locke  he  had  been  taught  by  Coleridge  to  speak  dis- 
respectfully as  a  timid  plagiarist  from  Hobbes,  an 
accommodator  of  truth  to  the  spirit  of  the  age,  an  in- 
tolerable thing  in  a  metaphysician,  however  prudent 
in  a  legislator. 

I  must  not  enter  these  fields,  though  I  should  like 
to  give  a  precis  of  Hazlitt's  lecture  on  "  Liberty  and 
Necessity,"  were  it  only  to  remind  a  babyish  age  of 
the  grandeur  of  the  controversies  that  once  engaged 
the  attention  of  philosophers  and  theologians.  Over  the 
philosophical  doctrine  of  Necessity  a  lurid  light  has 
been  thrown  by  the  Augustinian  theology.  Its  pale 
crest  of  thought  is  reddened  by  the  fires  of  hell,  but 
with  this  side  issue  Hazlitt  had  no  concern.  No  such 
pr&tis  shall  be  given ;  but  in  order  to  supply  an  illus- 
tration of  Hazlitt's  method  and  style,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  pay  a  vicarious  homage  to  a  favourite  author, 
I  will  transcribe  a  single  passage,  and  then  hurry  on 
to  where  Poetry  and  the  Drama, 

"  Knit  with  the  Graces  and  the  Hours,  in  dance 
Lead  on  the  Eternal  Spring." 

"  To  return  to  the  doctrine  of  Necessity.  I  shall  refer  to 
the  authority  of  but  one  more  writer,  who  has  indeed  ex- 
hausted the  subject,  and  anticipated  what  few  remarks  I  had 
to  offer  upon  it.  I  mean  Jonathan  Edwards,  in  his  treatise 
on  the  Will.  This  work,  setting  aside  its  Calvinistic  ten- 


100  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

dency,  with  which  I  have  nothing  to  do,  is  one  of  the  most 
closely  reasoned,  elaborate,  acute,  serious,  and  sensible  among 
modern  productions.  No  metaphysician  can  read  it  without 
feeling  a  wish  to  have  been  the  author  of  it.  The  gravity 
of  the  matter  and  the  earnestness  of  the  manner  are  alike 
admirable.  His  reasoning  is  not  of  that  kind,  which  con- 
sists in  having  a  smart  answer  for  every  trite  objection,  but 
in  attaining  true  and  satisfactory  solutions  of  things  per- 
ceived in  all  their  difficulty  and  in  all  their  force,  and  in 
every  variety  of  connection.  He  evidently  writes  to  satisfy 
his  own  mind  and  the  minds  of  those  who,  like  himself,  are 
intent  upon  the  pursuit  of  truth  for  its  own  sake.  There  is 
not  an  evasion  or  ambiguity  in  his  whole  book,  nor  a  wish 
to  produce  any  but  thorough  conviction.  He  does  not 
therefore  lead  his  readers  into  a  labyrinth  of  words,  or 
entangle  them  among  the  forms  of  logic,  or  mount  the  airy 
heights  of  abstraction,  but  descends  into  the  plain,  and 
mingles  with  the  business  and  feelings  of  mankind,  and 
grapples  with  common-sense,  and  subdues  it  to  the  force 
of  true  reason.  All  philosophy  depends  no  less  on  deep  and 
real  feeling  than  on  power  of  thought.  I  happen  to  have 
Edwards'  '  Inquiry  concerning  Freewill '  and  Dr.  Priestley's 
'  Illustrations  of  Philosophical  Necessity '  bound  up  in  the 
same  volume ;  and  I  confess  that  the  difference  in  the  man- 
ner of  these  two  writers  is  rather  striking.  The  plodding, 
persevering,  scrupulous  accuracy  of  the  one,  and  the  easy, 
cavalier,  verbal  fluency  of  the  other,  form  a  complete  con- 
trast. Dr.  Priestley's  whole  aim  seems  be  to  evade  the 
difficulties  of  his  subject,  Edwards'  to  answer  them.  The 
one  is  employed,  according  to  Berkeley's  allegory,  in  flinging 
dust  in  the  eyes  of  his  adversaries,  while  the  other  is  taking 
true  pains  in  digging  into  the  mine  of  knowledge.  All 
Dr.  Priestley's  arguments  on  this  subject  are  mere  hack- 
neyed commonplaces.  He  had  in  reality  no  opinions  of  his 
own ;  and  truth,  I  conceive,  never  takes  very  deep  root  in 
those  minds  on  which  it  is  merely  engrafted.  He  uniformly 
adopted  the  vantage  ground  of  every  question,  and  borrowed 
those  arguments  which  he  found  most  easy  to  be  wielded, 
and  of  most  service  in  that  kind  of  busy  intellectual  war- 


vi.]  THE   BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE  101 

fare  to  which  he  was  habituated.     He  was  an  able  con- 
troversialist, not  a  philosophical  reasoner." 

These  lectures  over,  and  there  being  no  living  to  be 
got  out  of  "Divine  Philosophy,"  Hazlitt  descended 
from  the  sublime  to  the  (comparatively)  ridiculous ; 
from  Hobbes  and  Berkeley  to  Castlereagh  and  Burdett, 
for  he  went  as  a  reporter  to  the  gallery  of  the  House 
of  Commons.  He  at  once,  the  fact  cannot  be  too 
early  or  too  bluntly  stated,  took  to  drink;  but  soon 
becoming  aware  of  the  devastation  wrought  by  this 
evil  habit,  like  another,  earlier,  and  greater  Parlia- 
mentary reporter,  he  altogether  eschewed  fermented 
liquors,  and  remained  for  the  rest  of  his  days  a  rigid 
total  abstainer,  only  one  lapse  (was  ever  conversion  so 
complete  ?)  being  recorded  against  him.  His  tea  was 
always  of  the  strongest,  it  is  true,  and  completely 
ruined  his  digestion,  but  his  "  abstinence "  was  com- 
plete. In  the  matter  of  strong  drink  no  man  is  in  a 
position  to  throw  a  stone  at  Hazlitt. 

"Ye  Prudes  in  Virtue,  say, 
Say,  ye  severest,  what  would  you  have  done  ?  " l 

The  House  of  Commons  made  a  great  impression 
upon  Hazlitt,  and  the  experience  he  gained  in  the  gal- 
lery enriches  many  of  his  essays.  He  was  no  slavish* 
stenographer  —  no  verbatim  man;  for  though  he  had 
been  taught  shorthand  as  well  as  Hebrew  at  Hackney, 
he  had  forgotten  both.  He  listened  to  the  speeches 
with  the  ear  of  a  connoisseur  in  rhetoric,  and  he  fixed 

1  There  is  some  uncertainty  when  Hazlitt  first  eschewed  strong 
drink,  though  none  as  to  the  fact  that  he  long  did  so.  See  Proc- 
ter's Charles  Lamb,  p.  27. 


102  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

upon  the  orator  the  eye  of  a  portrait  painter,  and  after- 
wards at  his  leisure  reproduced  such  portions  of  their 
speeches  as  remained  in  his  memory.  How  completely 
he  entered  into  the  spirit  of  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  how  well  he  knew  the  conditions  of  oratorical 
success  in  that  assembly,  it  would  be  easy  to  illustrate 
by  many  quotations,  but  I  must  limit  myself  to  one :  — 

"An  orator  can  hardly  get  beyond  commonplaces;  if  he 
does,  he  gets  beyond  his  hearers.  The  most  successful 
speakers,  even  in  the  House  of  Commons,  have  not  been  the 
best  scholars  or  the  finest  writers,  neither  those  who  took 
the  most  profound  views  of  their  subject,  nor  who  adorned  it 
with  the  most  original  fancy  or  the  richest  combinations  of 
language.  Those  speeches  that  in  general  told  best  at  the 
time  are  not  now  readable.  What  were  the  materials  of 
which  they  were  chiefly  composed  ?  An  imposing  detail  of 
passing  events,  a  formal  display  of  official  documents,  an 
appeal  to  established  maxims,  an  echo  of  popular  clamour, 
some  worn-out  metaphor  newly  vamped  up ;  some  hackneyed 
argument  used  for  the  hundredth,  nay,  thousandth  time,  to 
fall  in  with  the  interests,  the  passions,  or  prejudices  of  listen- 
ing and  devoted  admirers ;  some  truth  or  falsehood,  repeated 
as  the  shibboleth  of  party  time  out  of  mind,  which  gathers 
strength  from  sympathy  as  it  spreads,  because  it  is  under- 
stood or  assented  to  by  the  million,  and  finds,  in  the  in- 
creased action  of  the  minds  of  numbers,  the  weight  and  force 
of  an  instinct.  ...  To  give  a  reason  for  anything  is  to 
breed  a  doubt  of  it,  which  doubt  you  may  not  remove  in  the 
sequel ;  either  because  your  reason  may  not  be  a  good  one, 
or  because  the  person  to  whom  it  is  addressed  may  not  be 
able  to  comprehend  it,  or  because  others  may  not  be  able  to 
comprehend  it.  He  who  offers  to  go  into  the  grounds  of  an 
acknowledged  axiom  risks  the  unanimity  of  the  company 
'  by  most  admired  disorder,'  as  he  who  digs  to  the  foundation 
of  a  building  to  show  its  solidity  risks  its  falling.  But  a 
commonplace  is  enshrined  in  its  own  unquestioned  evidence, 
and  constitutes  its  own  immortal  basis.  Nature,  it  has  been 


vi.]  THE  BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE  103 

said,  abhors  a  vacuum;  and  the  House  of  Commons,  it 
might  be  said,  hates  everything  but  a  commonplace  ! "  — 
Plain  Speaker  "  On  the  Difference  between  Writing  and 
Speaking." 

Lest,  however,  it  should  be  supposed  Hazlitt  was 
only  bored  in  the  gallery,  I  add  another  quotation  from 
the  same  essay :  — 

"  The  excitement  of  leading  the  House  of  Commons 
(which,  in  addition  to  the  immediate  attention  and  applause 
that  follows,  is  a  sort  of  whispeiing  gallery  to  all  Europe) 
must  act  upon  the  brain  like  brandy  or  laudanum  upon  the 
stomach ;  and  must,  in  most  cases,  produce  the  same  debili- 
tating effects  afterwards.  That  any  one  accustomed  all  his 
life  to  the  tributary  roar  of  applause  from  the  great  council 
of  the  nation  should  think  of  dieting  himself  with  the  pros- 
pect of  posthumous  fame  as  an  author,  is  like  offering  a  con- 
firmed dram-drinker  a  glass  of  fair  water  for  his  morning's 
draught." 

Of  all  the  speeches  Hazlitt  heard  from  the  gallery, 
one  made  by  Plunkett  on  the  Catholic  Question  struck 
him  as  far  the  best.  Tradition  says  Hazlitt  was  so 
excited  by  it  that  he  quite  forgot  he  was  in  the  gallery 
for  a  purpose,  and  sat  motionless  and  entranced.  He 
admits  that  Plunkett  was  very  indifferently  reported ; 
but  adds,  with  the  composure  of  a  philosopher  em- 
ployed at  so  much  a  week  to  take  down  the  words  of 
ordinary  mortals,  "  though  the  best  speeches  are  the 
worst  reported,  the  worst  are  made  better  than  they 
are,  and  so  both  find  a  convenient  newspaper  level." 

Hazlitt  very  wisely  did  not  remain  long  in  the 
gallery,  but  found  other  employment  in  the  Morning 
Chronicle,  of  which  Mr.  Perry,  the  father  of  Sir  Erskine 
Perry  and  of  the  Miss  Perrys,  beloved  of  Thackeray, 
was  editor  and  proprietor. 


104  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

It  was  Perry's  ill-luck  to  have  two  or  three  men  of 
genius  on  his  staff,  and  he  has  suffered  accordingly. 
Between  the  brains  and  the  capital  of  a  newspaper 
the  relations  are  usually  strained.  Mr.  Perry,  so 
Hazlitt  thought,  was  unmindful  of  the  countless  col- 
umns of  wit  and  wisdom  contributed  to  an  otherwise 
dull  organ  of  public  opinion  by  his  now  ready  pen. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  proprietor  had  his  grievances. 
"  Poor  Perry,"  writes  Hazlitt,  "  what  bitter  complaints 
he  used  to  make  that  by  running  amuck  against  lords 
and  Scotchmen  I  should  not  leave  him  a  place  to  dine 
out  at !  The  expression  of  his  face  at  these  moments 
as  if  he  were  shortly  to  be  without  a  friend  in  the 
world  was  truly  pathetic."  The  humdrum  is  the 
safest  style.  A  man  of  genius  and  biting  tongue  is  as 
awkward  a  colleague  on  a  newspaper  as  on  the  Treas- 
ury Bench. 

Hazlitt  descended  from  the  gallery  of  the  House  of 
Commons  to  the  pit  of  the  theatre,  and  became  dra- 
matic critic  for  the  Chronicle  in  October  1813,  and  con- 
tinued to  write  regularly  in  that  capacity  until  May 
1814.  He  also  wrote  political  articles  for  the  same 
paper.  Specimens  of  his  activity  in  both  these  direc- 
tions will  be  found  in  his  Vieio  of  the  English  Stage 
(1818)  and  in  the  Political  Essays  (1819). 

After  leaving  the  Clironide  Hazlitt  wrote  for  the 
Examiner  both  dramatic  and  literary  pieces.  The 
essays  we  now  read  in  the  Round  Table  (1817)  for  the 
most  part  appeared  in  the  Examiner,  where  also  were 
published  two  savage  notices  of  Southey's  Lay  of  the 
Laureate,  which  did  not  fail  to  attract  the  attention  of 
the  Quarterly  Review.  Hazlitt  became  a  man  marked 
out  for  insult. 


vi.]  THE  BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE  105 

As  Hazlitt  practically  left  off  regular  dramatic 
criticism  in  1819,  his  performances  in  that  direction 
fall  first  to  be  considered. 

The  best  advice  ever  given  to  players  was  bestowed 
by  Shakespeare  in  the  famous  passage  in  Hamlet,  but 
who  is  to  advise  playgoers  ?  An  actor,  like  any  other 
artist,  is  usually  in  his  early  stages  willing  to  learn, 
but  the  public  is  seldom  in  a  mood  to  be  taught.  The 
poor  wretch  thinks  it  knows,  and  as  a  consequence  is 
always  ready  to  applaud  players  who  have  neither  the 
accent  of  Christians,  nor  the  gait  of  Christian,  pagan, 
nor  man,  but  who  can  strut  and  bellow  and  tear  a 
passion  to  tatters.  Shakespeare,  says  Mr.  Lewes  in  his 
book  on  Actors  and  Acting  (1875),  "saw  the  public 
mistaking  violence  for  passion,  turbulence  for  art,  and 
he  bade  them  remember  the  purpose  of  playing,  which 
is  to  hold  the  mirror  up  to  Nature."  But  not  only  do 
players  need  advice,  encouragement,  and  reproof,  and 
playgoers  the  discipline  of  education  and  the  cruci- 
fixion of  the  natural  man  ;  but  playwrights,  those  most 
sensitive  of  authors,  usually  require  to  be  reminded  of 
many  things.  To  be  a  good,  sensible,  dramatic  critic 
of  players,  playgoers,  and  playwrights  is  a  heavy  task. 

Hazlitt  was  in  no  sense  a  child  of  the  greenroom. 
He  was  born  in  the  study.  He  knew  no  players  except 
(he  says)  Liston,  nor  was  he,  until  he  became  a  critic 
of  the  play,  a  very  regular  playgoer.1  Like  most  sen- 
sible men,  he  went  to  the  playhouse  when  it  was  con- 
venient to  do  so.  In  1796  he  first  saw  John  Kemble 
in  Coriolanus,  and  fell  in  love  with  the  stately  bearing 

1  "  That  was  indeed  going  to  the  play  when  I  went  twice  a  year 
and  had  not  been  more  than  half-a-dozen  times  in  my  life."  — 
From  the  Letter-Bell  in  Sketches  and  Essays  (1839). 


106  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

and  scholarly  manner  of  that  old  campaigner.  Tlie 
School  for  Scandal  was  one  of  the  chief  delights  of  his 
early  days.  "  Jack  Palmer  was  the  man  for  Joseph 
Surface.  With  what  an  air  he  trod  the  stage ! " 
"Nobody  was  fit  to  succeed  Palmer."  We  all  have 
our  Jack  Palmers.  Of  Mrs.  Siddons,  Hazlitt  always 
wrote  in  an  ecstasy  of  passion.  She  was  to  him  on  the 
mimic  stage  what  Bonaparte  was  on  the  real  stage. 
"  The  stateliest  ornament  of  the  public  mind,  she  not 
only  was  the  idol  of  the  people,  not  only  hushed  the 
shout  of  the  pit  in  breathless  expectation ;  but  to  the 
retired  and  lonely  student  through  long  years  of  soli- 
tude her  face  shone  as  if  an  eye  had  appeared  in  heaven. 
To  have  seen  Mrs.  Siddons  was  an  event  in  every  one's 
life.  .  .  .  While  the  stage  lasts  there  will  never  be 
another  Mrs.  Siddons.  Tragedy  seemed  to  set  with 
her.  It  is  pride  and  happiness  enough  for  us  to  have 
lived  at  the  same  time  with  her  and  one  person  more." 
Hazlitt  brought  to  his  task-work,  enthusiasm,  elo- 
quence, a  considerable  stock  of  miscellaneous  reading, 
and  a  liking  for  the  play.  "  We  do  not  much  like  any 
persons  who  do  not  like  plays."  Hazlitt,  it  is  to  be 
feared,  was  never  sorry  for  a  reason  for  disliking 
"  persons."  It  has  often  been  said  that  his  liking  for 
plays  was  three  parts  bookish.  He  preferred  the 
words  to  the  action,  an  eloquent  passage  to  the  most 
superb  pantomime.  He  pronounces  Shakespeare  to  be 
too  great  for  the  stage,  and  bluntly  declares  that  he 
would  never  go  to  see  a  play  of  Shakespeare  acted  if 
he  could  help  it,  his  "most  exquisite  reason"  being 
that  "  not  only  are  the  more  refined  poetical  beauties, 
the  minuter  strokes  of  character,  lost  to  the  audience, 
but  the  most  striking  and  impressive  passages,  those 


TI.]  THE   BEGINNING   OF    STRIFE  107 

which  having  once  read  we  can  never  forget,  fail 
comparatively  of  their  effect  except  in  one  or  two 
instances."  This  cannot  be  good  dramatic  criticism, 
and  would  have  made  Shakespeare  stare.  Mr.  John 
Forster,  who  was  by  the  cabman's  report  "a  very 
harbitrary  gent,"  has  gone  so  far  as  to  affirm  positively 
and  in  the  teeth  of  Landor,  Lamb,  and  Hazlitt,  that 
the  author  of  Lear  "  would  rather  have  seen  his  play 
acted,  however  wretchedly,  in  a  barn  than  heard  it 
read  to  perfection  in  a  palace."  The  barn  might  have 
amused,  but  the  "  Shakespearean  Reading "  in  the 
palace  must  have  bored  Shakespeare  well  nigh  to 
death. 

Talfourd's  remark  that  "the  players  put  Hazlitt 
out "  is  often  quoted,  and  cannot  be  disregarded.  It 
probably  meant  no  more  than  that  the  critic  got  easily 
tired  of  stage  niceties  and  "  business,"  and  preferred 
pursuing  his  own  thoughts  and  snuffing  the  perfume 
of  his  own  sentimental  memories  to  keeping  his  atten- 
tion fixed  upon  the  exits  and  entrances  of  the  com- 
pany. If  seeing  Hazlitt's  favourite  Kean  was  like 
reading  Shakespeare  by  flashes  of  lightning,  so  reading 
Hazlitt's  criticism  of  Kean  is  like  seeing  that  actor 
by  flashes  of  lightning.  The  gaps  Hazlitt  filled  up  out 
of  his  own  head. 

I  expect,  it  is  true,  that  fond  as  Hazlitt  may  have 
been  of  the  play,  he  enjoyed  old  plays  and  old  play- 
bills far  more  than  he  did  turning  out  to  go  to  Drury 
Lane  to  write  a  column  and  a  half  even  about  Kean. 
His  was  a  literary,  not  a  dramatic  gusto. 

"  If,  indeed,  by  any  spell  or  power  of  necromancy,  all  the 
celebrated  actors,  for  the  last  hundred  years,  could  be  made 


108  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

to  appear  again  on  the  boards  of  Covent  Garden  and  Drury 
Lane  for  the  last  time,  in  their  most  brilliant  parts,  what 
a  rich  treat  to  the  town,  what  a  feast  for  the  critics,  to  go 
and  see  Betterton,  and  Booth,  and  Wilks,  and  Sandford, 
and  Nokes,  and  Leigh,  and  Penkethman,  and  Bullock,  and 
Estcourt,  and  Dogget,  and  Mrs.  Barry,  and  Mrs.  Montfort, 
and  Mrs.  Oldfield,  and  Mrs.  Bracegirdle,  and  Mrs.  Gibber,  and 
Gibber  himself,  the  prince  of  coxcombs,  and  Macklin,  and 
Quin,  and  Rich,  and  Mrs.  Clive,  and  Mrs.  Pritchard,  and  Mrs. 
Abingdon,  and  Weston,  and  Shuter,  and  Garrick,  and  all  the 
rest  of  those  who  '  gladdened  life,  and  whose  death  eclipsed 
the  gaiety  of  nations ' !  We  should  certainly  be  there.  We 
should  buy  a  ticket  for  the  season.  We  should  enjoy  our 
hundred  days  again.  We  should  not  miss  a  single  night. 
We  would  not,  for  a  great  deal,  be  absent  from  Betterton's 
Hamlet  or  his  Brutus,  or  from  Booth's  Cato,  as  it  was  first 
acted  to  the  contending  applause  of  Whigs  and  Tories.  We 
should  be  in  the  first  row  when  Mrs.  Barry  (who  was  kept 
by  Lord  Rochester,  and  with  whom  Otway  was  in  love) 
played  Monimia  or  Belvidera  ;  and  we  suppose  we  should  go 
to  see  Mrs.  Bracegirdle  (with  whom  all  the  world  was  in 
love)  in  all  her  parts.  We  should  then  know  exactly  whether 
Penkethman's  manner  of  picking  a  chicken,  and  Bullock's 
mode  of  devouring  asparagus,  answered  to  the  ingenious 
account  of  them  in  the  Tatler ;  and  whether  Dogget  was 
equal  to  Dowton ;  whether  Mrs.  Montford  or  Mrs.  Abingdon 
was  the  finest  lady ;  whether  Wilks  or  Gibber  was  the  best 
Sir  Henry  Wildair ;  whether  Macklin  was  really  '  the  Jew 
that  Shakespeare  drew ' ;  and  whether  Garrick  was,  upon 
the  whole,  so  great  an  actor  as  the  world  would  have  made 
him  out !  Many  people  have  a  strong  desire  to  pry  into  the 
secrets  of  futurity ;  but  for  our  own  parts,  we  should  be 
satisfied  if  we  had  the  power  to  recall  the  dead,  and  live  the 
past  over  again,  as  often  as  we  pleased  !  " — Criticisms  of  the 
English  stage,  On  Actors  and.  Acting. 

Hazlitt's  name  as  a  dramatic  critic  is  linked  with 
Edmund  Kean's,  "the  little  man  in  a  great  passion,"  as 
his  enemies  called  him.  Hazlitt  was  in  Drury  Lane 


vi.]  THE   BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE  109 

on  the  26th  of  January  1814,  when  "  Mr.  Kean  from 
the  Theatre  Koyal,  Exeter,"  assumed  the  part  of 
Shylock,  and  the  criticism  of  Keaii's  Shylock  appeared 
in  the  Morning  Chronicle  the  next  day.  Eighty -seven 
years  have  taken  the  fire  out  of  Hazlitt's  first  notice 
of  Kean  ;  but  followed  up  as  that  notice  was  by  other 
criticisms  of  the  same  great  actor's  Hamlet,  Othello, 
lago,  Macbeth,  and  Richard  the  Third,  parts  which, 
according  to  the  happy  practice  of  the  time,  succeeded 
one  another  with  exciting  and  stimulating  rapidity, 
Hazlitt's  praise  produced  a  great  impression,  and  gave 
rise  to  the  report,  absolutely  without  foundation,  that 
the  critic  had  received  £1500  from  the  management 
of  Drury  Lane  to  puff  Kean. 

Hazlitt  had  been  told  by  his  editor  to  give  Kean 
as  favourable  a  notice  as  he  could,  and  he  gave  a  true 
one.  He  rejoiced  over  Kean  as  the  first  gleam  of 
genius  thrown  across  the  stage  for  many  a  long  day. 
He  found  in  him,  for  all  his  faults  and  shortcomings, 
a  great  actor,  and  he  said  so  over  and  over  again.  His 
praise  was  discriminating.  He  was,  I  need  not  say, 
no  stage-struck  admirer,  no  fatuous,  foolish-faced 
devotee,  like  those  of  old  to  whom 

" Pritchard's  genteel  and  Garrick  six  feet  high." 

To  Hazlitt  Kean  did  not  cease  to  be  a  little  man 
with  a  hoarse  voice  simply  because  he  could  act 
Othello,  nor  did  he  find  it  necessary  to  belittle  Kemble 
because  in  certain  parts  and  in  certain  ways  he  pre- 
ferred Kean.  Mr.  Lewes,  who  used  to  see  Kean 
between  the  years  1825  and  1832,  agrees  with  Hazlitt 
in  thinking  Othello  his  greatest  part.  Lewes,  like 
Hazlitt,  was  a  great  admirer,  and  accounted  Kean, 


110  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

when  measured  by  his  strongest  part,  as  incomparably 
the  greatest  actor  he  had  ever  seen.  Both  critics  refer 
with  delight  to  his  acting  of  the  scene  with  Anne  in 
Richard  the  Third  —  to  both  Kean  was  a  happy  life- 
long memory.  What  nonsense  it  is  about  Shakespeare 
not  being  an  acting  dramatist!  Kean's  Romeo  did 
not  excite  Hazlitt's  admiration.  "  We  never  saw  any- 
thing less  ardent  or  less  voluptuous.  In  the  balcony 
scene,  in  particular,  he  was  cold,  tame,  and  unimpres- 
sive. It  was  said  of  Garrick  and  Barry  in  this  scene 
that  the  one  acted  as  if  he  would  jump  up  to  the  lady, 
and  the  other  as  if  he  would  make  the  lady  jump  down 
to  him.  Mr.  Kean  produced  neither  of  these  effects. 
He  stood  like  a  statue  of  lead." 

Hazlitt  collected  his  dramatic  criticisms,  and  made 
a  volume  of  them  in  1818 ;  but  before  that  date  he  had 
turned  them  to  considerable  use  in  preparing  for  the 
press  his  well-known  book,  the  Characters  of  Shakes- 
pear's  Plays  (1817).  This  work  is  not  usually  connected 
with  Hazlitt's  stage  criticisms ;  but  no  inconsiderable 
part  of  it,  and  that  part  the  best,  consists  of  extracts 
bodily  uplifted  from  the  Chronicle,  the  Champion,  and 
the  Examiner.  It  is  only  necessary  to  compare  the  Mac- 
beth of  the  Characters  with  the  criticism  of  Mr.  Kean's 
Macbeth  that  appeared  in  the  Champion  of  November 
13,  1814 ;  the  Othello  of  the  Characters  with  the  criti- 
cism of  Mr.  Kean's  Othello  that  appeared  in  the 
Examiner  of  July  24,  1814,  and  January  7,  1816; 
the  Coriolanus  of  the  Cliaracters  with  the  criticism  of 
Mr.  Kemble's  Coriolanus  that  appeared  in  the  Examiner 
of  December  15,  1816 ;  and  to  do  the  same  with  the 
Hamlet  and  Midsummer's  Night's  Dream  of  the 
Characters  with  the  Chronicle  of  March  14,  1814,  and 


vi.]  THE  BEGINNING  OF  STEIFE  111 

the  Examiner  of  January  21,  1816,  to  see  clearly  that 
but  for  the  newspapers  and  Kean,  Hazlitt  would  never 
have  written  his  Characters. 

Another  noticeable  thing  is,  how  like  a  Criticism  is 
to  a  Character,  and  how  like  a  CJiaracter  to  a  Criticism. 
Whether  Hazlitt  is  criticising  Shakespeare  in  his 
study,  or  from  a  side-box  in  the  theatre,  hardly  makes 
any  difference. 

The  obvious  origin  of  the  CJiaracters  explains  a  main 
defect.  Hazlitt  seldom  gets  away  from  the  play  in 
which  the  character  he  is  discussing  occurs ;  there  are 
few  side-lights,  cross-quotations ;  he  does  not  compare 
one  character  in  one  play  with  another  in  another 
play,  but  sticks  to  the  "  book  of  the  play "  more 
closely  than  there  was  any  need  for  a  literary  critic  to 
to  do.  When  criticising  a  play  as  acted,  why,  then, 
the  play  is  the  thing ;  but  when  writing  at  large  about 
Shakespeare  and  his  men  and  women,  you  may  surely 
roam  freely  through  his  whole  spacious  domain.  If 
there  is  too  much  of  the  library  in  Hazlitt's  theatre, 
so  perhaps  there  is  a  little  too  much  of  the  theatre 
in  Hazlitt's  library. 

He  did  not  confine  himself  during  the  years  1814- 
1816  to  dramatic  criticism ;  he  wrote  de  omnibus  rebus 
in  the  pages  of  the  Examiner  ;  and  in  1817  the  Round 
Table  appeared,  containing  fifty-two  essays,  all  but 
twelve  being  Hazlitt's.  The  Examiner  belonged  to 
Leigh  Hunt,  whose  original  plan  was  that  there  should 
appear  in  it  a  series  of  papers  in  the  manner  of  the 
Spectator  and  the  Tatler  by  divers  hands.  Hence  the 
title  given  to  the  series  as  it  appeared  in  the  columns 
of  the  paper.  But  Bonaparte's  activity,  so  Hazlitt 
declares,  broke  up  the  Round  Table  ;  Hunt,  who  wrote 


112  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

the  dozen  papers  that  were  not  Hazlitt's,  busied  him- 
self in  other  ways ;  no  third  pen  was  found  ready,  and 
the  task  of  keeping  up  the  Mound  Table  fell  chiefly 
upon  Hazlitt. 

In  these  two  volumes  we  first  meet  with  Hazlitt, 
the  miscellaneous  writer.  Montaigne  was  in  Hazlitt's 
opinion  the  first  person  who  in  his  essays  led  the  way 
to  this  kind  of  writing  among  the  moderns,  being, 
according  to  Hazlitt,  the  first  who  had  the  courage  to 
say  as  an  author  what  he  felt  as  a  man.  Hazlitt  had 
plenty  of  this  kind  of  courage  —  put  a  pen  in  his  hand, 
and  he  would  say  anything.  In  the  Mound  Table  he 
applies  his  mind  to  subjects  so  varied  as  the  "  Causes 
of  Methodism "  and  "  John  Buncle,"  and  to  abstract 
themes  such  as  "  The  Tendency  of  Sects  "  and  "  Post- 
humous Fame,"  and  the  analysis  of  character. 

For  writing  of  this  kind  Hazlitt  had  many  qualifica- 
tions; he  is  never  priggish,  and  seldom  even  for  a 
moment  dull ;  his  fits  of  ill-temper  and  spleen  are 
conveyed  with  a  petulance  that  is  never  unpleasant ; 
whilst  he  is  always  full,  perhaps  to  overflowing,  of 
human  nature  and  the  love  of  things.  "  Give  a  man," 
he  says  in  "  The  Fight,"  "  a  topic  in  his  head,  a  throb 
of  pleasure  in  his  heart,  and  he  will  be  glad  to  share 
it  with  the  first  person  he  meets."  In  this  sentence 
you  may  see  Hazlitt,  the  miscellaneous  writer,  the 
horror  of  landladies,  so  prone  was  he  to  scribble  topics 
for  essays  in  blacklead  on  their  walls  and  mantel- 
pieces. When  he  found  his  topic,  his  heart  throbbed, 
and  still  throbs,  in  a  dozen  volumes  —  "A  tall  Eng- 
lish yeoman  "  —  I  have  still  "  The  Fight "  open  before 
me  —  "  was  making  such  a  prodigious  noise  about  rent 
and  taxes  and  the  price  of  corn  now  and  formerly  that 


vi.]  THE   BEGINNING  OF  STRIFE  113 

he  had  prevented  us  being  heard  at  the  gate.  The 
first  thing  I  heard  him  say  was  to  a  shuffling  person 
who  wanted  to  be  off  a  bet  for  a  shilling  glass  of 
brandy  and  water,  '  Confound  it,  man  —  don't  be 
insipid.'  Thinks  I,  that  is  a  good  phrase."  From 
insipidity,  the  curse  of  the  miscellaneous  writer, 
Hazlitt  is  wholly  delivered. 

These  Round  Table  papers  appeared  in  the  Examiner 
between  January  1815  and  January  1817.  Hazlitt 
never  wrote  better  in  his  life.  It  was  unfortunate 
that  when  he  came  to  reprint  these  essays,  he  thought 
fit  to  include  among  them  the  "Character  of  Pitt," 
taken  from  Coleridge,  and  already  part  of  his  Free 
Thoughts  pamphlet  of  1806.  An  author  who  at  last 
gets  a  hearing  is  tempted  to  force  the  public  to  listen 
to  what  it  once  refused  to  hear.  How  Gifford  fell 
upon  the  Round  Table  has  been  already  told,  nor  did 
the  Characters  of  Shakespear's  Plays  escape  the  same 
foul-mouthed  condemnation.  The  readers  of  the 
Quarterly  Review  were  told  that  Hazlitt  in  composing 
his  Characters  disgraced  literature,  and  proved  that 
his  knowledge  of  Shakespeare  and  the  English  lan- 
guage was  on  a  par  with  the  purity  of  his  morals  and 
the  depth  of  his  understanding.  This  diatribe  is  pro- 
fessedly based  on  some  remarks  upon  "Coriolanus" 
which  had  first  done  duty  in  the  Examiner  as  a  criti- 
cism of  Mr.  Kemble  in  that  character,  and  were  after- 
wards used  afresh  in  the  Characters,  but  the  ferocity  of 
Gifford  was  entirely  due  to  the  fact  that  he  regarded 
Hazlitt  as  a  sour  Jacobinical  fellow  who  was  against 
the  Government.  Had  he  written  hymns,  the  same 
measure  would  have  been  meted  out  to  him.  Gifford's 
abuse  stopped  the  sale  of  the  Characters  ;  but,  happily, 


114  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP.  vi. 

there  is  no  need  to  grow  tearful  over  Hazlitt's  wrongs. 
He  had  enough  bile  in  his  hold  to  swamp  a  dozen 
Giffords,  of  whom  he  was  to  speak  his  mind  both  in 
his  Letter  to  William  Giffbrd,  Esq.  (1819),  and  in  his 
Spirit  of  the  Age  (1S25-). 


CHAPTER  VII 

LIFE   AND    LECTURES 

HAVING  seen  Hazlitt  fairly  matriculated  in  the  school, 
to  use  his  own  bitter  words,  of  "  squint-eyed  suspicion, 
idiot  wonder,  and  grinning  scorn,"  it  will  be  as  well 
to  return  for  a  short  while  to  his  life,  as  he  led  it, 
apart  from  his  manifold  scribblings  in  the  press.  We 
left  him  sitting  in  Milton's  wainscoted  room  on  the 
first  floor  of  No.  19  York  Street,  out  of  the  windows 
of  which  he  could  see  his  landlord,  old  Jeremy  Ben- 
tham,  skipping  about  his  garden  "in  eager  conversa- 
tion with  some  opposition  member,  some  expatriated 
patriot  or  transatlantic  adventurer,  urging  the  extinc- 
tion of  close  boroughs,  or  planning  a  code  of  laws  for 
some  'lone  island  in  the  watery  waste,'  his  walk 
almost  amounting  to  a  run,  his  tongue  keeping  pace 
with  it  in  shrill,  clattering  accents,  negligent  of  his 
person,  his  dress,  and  his  manners,  intent  only  on  his 
grand  theme  of  Utility."  l  Hazlitt  is  as  good  a  hand 
at  a  description  as  Carlyle  himself. 

Unluckily,  the  marriage  with  Miss  Stoddart  did  not 
turn  out  a  success.  It  would  have  been  strange  if 
it  had.  Neither  party  had  bargained  for  happiness. 
It  was  not  a  case  of  love  flying  out  of  the  window,  for 
the  love  was  never  there.  Mrs.  Hazlitt  was  unroman- 
tic,  undomestic,  untidy,  and  selfish,  and  her  husband 

1 '  Jeremy  Bentham.'  —  The  Spirit  of  the  Age. 
116 


116  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

was  a  sentimentalist  on  paper,  irregular  in  habits, 
uncertain  in  temper,  and  at  least  as  selfish  as  his 
spouse.  The  result  was  uncomfortable.  The  couple 
had  neither  money,  manners,  nor  love  to  keep  them 
together.  With  Gifford  ravening  like  a  wolf  in 
Albemarle  Street,  and  Bonaparte  shut  up  with  Sir 
Hudson  Lowe  in  Longwood,  it  would  have  been  a 
consolatory  circumstance  had  there  been  an  Angel  in 
the  house  in  York  Street.  Charles  Churchill  is  uot  a 
sincere  poet,  but  his  lines  ring  true :  — 

"  'Tis  not  the  babbling  of  a  busy  world, 
Where  praise  and  censure  are  at  random  hurled, 
Which  can  the  meanest  of  my  thoughts  control, 
Or  shake  one  settled  purpose  of  my  soul ; 
Free  and  at  large  might  their  wild  curses  roam 
If  all,  if  all,  alas  I  were  well  at  home." 

All  was  not  well  at  home,  but  the  Hazlitts  got  on  at 
least  as  well  as  might  be  expected.  They  never  laid 
hands  on  each  other,  and  indeed  remained  through  the 
very  oddest  occurrences  good  friends  enough.  Their 
little  boy  was  a  source  of  pleasure  and  a  comfort  to 
both  his  parents.  Haydon,  whose  acquaintance  Haz- 
litt  made  in  Northcote's  studio,  has  recorded  in  his 
diary  how  he  once  went  by  invitation  to  York  Street 
to  attend  the  somewhat  delayed  christening  of  the 
young  William,  now  a  boy  three  years  old.  On  arriv- 
ing at  the  door  Haydon  found  Hazlitt  out,  and  no 
signs  of  any  impending  rite.  Mrs.  Hazlitt  was  in  a 
bedgown  and  low  spirits,  and  said  that  her  husband 
had  gone  out  to  look  for  a  parson.  Haydon  went  in 
search  and  found  the  father  in  St.  James's  Park  in  a 
great  rage,  all  the  parsons  being  away  from  home. 
The  ceremony  had  to  be  postponed,  but  later  in  the 


TIL]  LIFE  AND  LECTURES  117 

afternoon  Charles  Lamb  and  his  sister  arrived,  and 
one  or  two  others,  and  there  was  good  talk,  but  no 
food.  The  boy  was  duly  christened  (I  hasten  to  add) 
in  St.  Margaret's  Church  on  the  26th  of  September  1814. 

Mrs.  Hazlitt  had  good  cause  for  her  low  spirits  and 
indifferent  health,  as  may  be  found  stated  with  un- 
usual bluntness  in  her  grandson's  Memoirs  of  William 
Hazlitt  (1867).  Another  son,  christened  John,  was 
born  in  1815,  but,  to  his  father's  lasting  sorrow,  died 
before  he  had  lived  a  year. 

Although  Hazlitt  was  not  a  man  famous  for  his 
friendships,  he  was  a  good  hand  at  making  acquaint- 
ances. He  was  excellent  company  on  the  top  of  a 
stage-coach  or  in  the  parlour  of  an  old  inn.  He  had 
no  passion  for  respectability,  and  did  not  insist  on 
genius.  He  was  not  fond  of  parties  ;  and  though  he 
looked  well  on  his  way  to  Mr.  Curran's  "  in  black  silk 
smalls  and  blue  coat  and  gilt  buttons,"  he  did  not 
willingly  wear  such  clothes.  The  Bloom sbury  gran- 
deur of  the  Montagus  did  not  impress  him.  He  pre- 
ferred the  company  of  any  Mr.  John  Simpkins, 
"  hosier  in  the  Strand,"  or  of  Mr.  Fisher,  "  the  poul- 
terer in  Duke  Street,"  who,  wiser  than  Lamb,  could 
enjoy  both  Oil  Bias  and  Don  Quixote,  and  doted  on 
Sterne,  to  that  of  dull  members  of  Parliament,  or  of 
authors  in  love  with  themselves.  His  essays  are  full 
of  references  to  odd  acquaintances  whose  society  and 
characteristic,  if  not  profound,  remarks  tickled  his 
fancy :  *  "  One  of  the  most  pleasant  and  least  tiresome 

1  "  I  know  an  undertaker  that  is  the  greatest  prig  in  the  streets 
of  London,  and  an  Aldermanbury  haberdasher  that  has  the  most 
military  strut  of  any  lounger  in  Bond  Street  or  St.  James's."  —  Essay 
on  Fashion  in  Sketches  and  Essays  (1839) . 


118  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

of  our  acquaintance  is  a  humourist  who  has  three  or 
four  quaint  witticisms  and  proverbial  phrases  which  he 
always  repeats  over  and  over ;  but  he  does  this  with  the 
same  vivacity  and  freshness  as  ever,  so  that  you  feel  the 
same  amusement  with  less  effort  than  if  he  had  startled 
his  hearers  with  a  succession  of  original  conceits." 

Mr.  George  Mounsey  of  Staple  Inn,  of  the  firm  of 
Mounsey  and  Gray,  Solicitors,  lives  in  Hazlitt's  Essay 
on  Coffee-house  Politicians,  after  the  same,  though 
not  quite  the  same  fashion,  as  does  George  Dyer  in 
the  Essays  of  Elia.  Hazlitt  never  grew  tired  of 
Mounsey,  though  others  speedily  did.  This  excellent, 
though  bibulous  solicitor,  was  the  oldest  frequenter 
and  longest  sitter-up  of  the  Southampton  Coffee-house 
standing  at  the  corner  of  Southampton  Buildings  and 
Chancery  Lane.1  Just  the  place  for  a  solicitor.  "  I 
never  knew  Mounsey  approve  of  anything  unfair  or 
illiberal.  There  is  a  candour  and  uprightness  about 
his  mind  which  can  be  neither  wheedled  or  browbeat 
into  unjustifiable  complaisance.  He  looks  straight 
forward  as  he  sits  with  his  glass  in  his  hand,  turning 
neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left.  .  .  .  Mounsey  with- 
out being  the  most  communicative  is  the  most  conver- 
sible  man  I  know.  ...  If  he  has  nothing  to  say,  he 
drinks  your  health.  .  .  .  His  favourite  phrase  is, 
'  We  have  all  of  us  something  of  the  coxcomb.' " 

Mounsey  in  his  day  had  consorted  with  wits.  At 
least  he  said  he  knew  Tobin,  Person,  Wilson,  Paley, 
Erskine,  and  others,  and  he  could  speak  of  the  pleas- 
antness of  Paley  and  the  potations  and  Greek  of 
Porson.  But  of  Greek  in  cider  cellars  Mounsey  had 

1  He  disappears  from  the  Law  Lists  about  1832. 


vn.]  LIFE  AND  LECTURES  119 

no  great  opinion;  and  on  Hazlitt's  saying  that  he 
once,  and  only  once,  saw  Porson,  and  that  was  in  the 
library  of  the  London  Institution  in  Finsbury  Square, 
when  he  was  dressed  in  an  old  rusty  black  coat  with 
cobwebs  hanging  to  the  skirts  of  it,  and  with  a  large 
patch  of  brown  paper  covering  the  whole  length  of 
his  nose,  looking  for  all  the  world  like  a  drunken 
carpenter,  and  talking  to  one  of  the  proprietors  with 
an  air  of  suavity  approaching  condescension,  Mounsey 
observed,  "  I  submit,  sir,  whether  common-sense  is  not 
the  principal  thing." 

Another  acquaintance  was  Joseph  Parkes,  also  a 
solicitor,  a  Birmingham  man,  and  the  author,  if  I  mis- 
take not,  of  an  exceedingly  interesting,  not  to  say 
exciting,  History  of  the  Court  of  Chancery  composed 
in  a  spirit  of  rational  reform  which  it  has  taken  half 
a  century  partially  to  realise.  Parkes  had  his  lighter 
moments,  which  have  secured  him  a  fame  which  has 
already  outlived  the  old  Court  he  wrote  about,  for  he 
figures  in  Hazlitt's  famous  "  Fight "  :  "  Joe  and  I, 
though  we  seldom  met,  were  an  alter  idem  on  this 
memorable  occasion,  and  had  not  an  idea  that  we  did 
not  candidly  impart ;  and  so  carelessly  did  we  fleet  the 
time,  that  I  wish  no  better  when  there  is  another  fight 
than  to  have  him  for  a  companion  on  my  journey  down 
and  to  return  with  my  friend  Jack  Pigott  talking  of 
what  was  to  happen,  or  what  did  happen,  with  a  noble 
subject  always  at  hand,  and  liberty  to  digress  to  others 
whenever  they  offered." 

What  was  the  noble  subject  always  at  hand  when  in 
company  with  Jack  Pigott  ?  Had  it  been  "  Bob  Pigott," 
"the  Englishman  of  the  French  Revolution,"  the  answer 
would  be  easy  ;  but  Eobert  Pigott  died  in  1794. 


120  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Between  Lamb  and  Hazlitt  there  was  real  friend- 
ship ;  and,  in  the  true  sense  of  a  phrase  now  soiled  by 
ignoble  use,  mutual  admiration.  They  quarrelled  at 
times  —  once,  but  not  for  long,  over  an  early  copy  of 
Wordsworth's  Excursion,  sent  to  Lamb  for  the  purpose 
of  a  review  in  the  Quarterly  of  all  places.  Hazlitt 
heard  of  its  arrival,  and  sent  Martin  Burney  to  lay 
hands  on  it,  which  Martin  did,  and  brought  it  back  to 
Hazlitt,  who  at  once  sat  himself  down  and  wrote  a 
long  and  eloquent  but  independent  critique,  which  was 
forthwith  printed  in  the  Examiner,  and  afterwards  re- 
printed in  the  Hound  Table,  and  all  this  before  Lamb 
had  time  to  compose  a  sentence  of  his  review  for 
the  Qiiarterly,  which  when  it  did  appear  was  so 
mangled  by  the  editor  as  to  be  worthless.  Elia  was 
annoyed,  and  no  wonder ;  and  Hazlitt  was  so  annoyed 
at  his  being  annoyed,  that  he  called  at  the  Temple  and 
gave  Charles  and  his  sister  "a  good  blowing-up." 
There  are  several  references  to  this  affair  in  Lamb's 
letters  to  the  Wordsworths.  Afterwards  a  more  serious 
quarrel,  about  what  I  know  not,  separated  the  two 
friends  for  too  long  a  period ;  but  Lamb's  famous 
letter  to  Southey,  which  appeared  in  the  London 
Magazine  for  October  1823,  contained  an  allusion  to 
Hazlitt  in  terms  which  made  a  reconciliation  inevitable. 

A  well-known  essay  of  Hazlitt's  is  called  "  Persons 
one  would  wish  to  have  seen,"  and  purports  to  be  a 
record  of  the  talk  at  one  of  Lamb's  "Wednesdays"  in 
the  Temple.  I  do  not  think  it  is  one  of  his  happiest 
efforts,  and  it  is  impossible  to  accept  it  as  a  specimen 
of  Lamb's  mode  of  talk.  Hazlitt  had  not  the  tempera- 
ment of  a  Boswell,  his  disposition  was  too  indolent, 
his  wit  too  quick,  his  historic  conscience  too  sluggish, 


vii.]  LIFE  AND  LECTURES  121 

to  make  him  a  trustworthy  reporter  of  other  men's 
talk.1  His  book  on  Northcote  illustrates  his  method. 
It  no  doubt  contains  some  of  the  things  N/orthcote 
said ;  but  how  much  should  be  ISTorthcote,  and  how 
much  Hazlitt,  talking  as  if  he  were  Northcote,  was 
determined  by  the  whim  of  the  moment  of  writing. 

A  better  account  of  Lamb  and  his  friends  is  to  be 
found  in  the  essay  On  the  Conversation  of  Authors  :  — 

"  This  was  the  case  formerly  at  Lamb's,  where  we  used  to 
have  many  lively  skirmishes  at  their  Thursday  evening  parties. 
0  for  the  pen  of  John  Buncle  to  consecrate  a  petit  souvenir 
to  their  memory !  There  was  Lamb  himself,  the  most  de- 
lightful, the  most  provoking,  the  most  witty  and  sensible  of 
men.  He  always  made  the  best  pun  and  the  best  remark  in 
the  course  of  the  evening.  His  serious  conversation,  like  his 
serious  writing,  is  his  best.  No  one  ever  stammered  out 
such  fine,  piquant,  deep,  eloquent  things  in  half-a-dozen  half 
sentences  as  he  does.  His  jests  scald  like  tears,  and  he 
probes  a  question  with  a  play  upon  words.  What  a  keen, 
laughing,  hair-brained  vein  of  home-felt  truth  !  What  choice 
venom !  How  often  did  we  cut  into  the  haunch  of  letters 
while  we  discussed  the  haunch  of  mutton  on  the  table  !  How 
we  skimmed  the  cream  of  criticism  !  How  we  got  into  the 
heart  of  controversy  !  How  we  picked  out  the  marrow  of 
authors !  '  And,  in  our  flowing  cups,  many  a  good  name 
and  true  was  freshly  remembered.'  Recollect  (most  sage  and 
critical  reader)  that  in  all  this  I  was  but  a  guest !  Need  I 
go  over  the  names  ?  They  were  but  the  old  everlasting  set 
—  Milton  and  Shakespeare,  Pope  and  Dryden,  Steele  and 
Addison,  Swift  and  Gay,  Fielding,  Smollett,  Sterne,  Richard- 
son, Hogarth's  prints,  Claude's  landscapes,  the  cartoons  at 
Hampton  Court,  and  all  those  things  that,  having  once  been, 
must  ever  be.  The  Scotch  novels  had  not  then  been  heard 
of;  so  we  said  nothing  about  them.  In  general,  we  were 
hard  upon  the  moderns.  The  author  of  the  Rambler  was 

1  His  memory  was  seldom  at  fault  (see  Lamb's '  Mystification,' 
before  quoted),  but  he  had  no  conscience  in  such  matters. 


122  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

only  tolerated  in  Boswell's  Life  of  him;  and  it  was  as  much 
as  any  one  could  do  to  edge  in  a  word  for  Junius.  Lamb 
could  not  bear  Oil  Bias.  This  was  a  fault.  I  remember 
the  greatest  triumph  I  ever  had  was  in  persuading  him,  after 
some  years'  difficulty,  that  Fielding  was  better  than  Smollett. 
On  one  occasion  he  was  for  making  out  a  list  of  persons 
famous  in  history  that  one  would  wish  to  see  again — at  the 
head  of  whom  were  Pontius  Pilate,  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  and 
Dr.  Faustus  —  but  we  blackballed  most  of  his  list !  But 
with  what  a  gusto  would  he  describe  his  favourite  authors, 
Donne,  or  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  call  their  most  crabbed 
passages  delicious  I  He  tried  them  on  his  palate  as  epicures 
taste  olives,  and  his  observations  had  a  smack  in  them,  like 
a  roughness  on  the  tongue.  With  what  discrimination  he 
hinted  a  defect  in  what  he  admired  most — as  in  saying  that 
the  display  of  the  sumptuous  banquet  in  Paradise  Regained 
was  not  in  true  keeping,  as  the  simplest  fare  was  all  that  was 
necessary  to  tempt  the  extremity  of  hunger,  and  stating  that 
Adam  and  Eve  in  Paradise  Lost  were  too  much  like  married 
people.  He  has  furnished  many  a  text  for  Coleridge  to  preach 
upon.  There  was  no  fuss  or  cant  about  him  ;  nor  were  his 
sweets  or  his  sours  ever  diluted  with  one  particle  of  affectation. 
I  cannot  say  that  the  party  at  Lamb's  were  all  of  one  descrip- 
tion. There  were  honorary  members,  lay  brothers.  Wit  and 
good  fellowship  was  the  motto  inscribed  over  the  door.  When 
a  stranger  came  in,  it  was  not  asked,  '  Has  he  written  any- 
thing ? ' —  we  were  above  that  pedantry;  but  we  waited  to  see 
what  he  could  do.  If  he  could  take  a  hand  at  piquet,  he  was 
welcome  to  sit  down.  If  a  person  liked  anything,  if  he 
took  snuff  heartily,  it  was  sufficient.  He  would  understand 
by  analogy  the  pungency  of  other  things  besides  Irish  black- 
guard or  Scotch  rappee.  A  character  was  good  anywhere,  in 
a  room  or  on  paper.  But  we  abhorred  insipidity,  affectation, 
and  fine  gentlemen.  There  was  one  of  our  party  who  never 
failed  to  mark  '  two  for  his  Nob '  at  cribbage,  and  he  was 
thought  no  mean  person.  This  was  Ned  Phillips,  and  a 
better  fellow  in  his  way  breathes  not.  There  was  Rickman, 
who  asserted  some  incredible  matter-of-fact  as  a  likely  para- 
dox, and  settled  all  controversies  by  an  ipse  dixit,  a  fiat  of 


vii.]  LIFE   AND  LECTURES  123 

his  will,  hammering  out  many  a  hard  theory  on  the  anvil 
of  his  brain — the  Baron  Munchausen  of  politics  and  practical 
philosophy ;  there  was  Captain  Burney,  who  had  you  at  an 
advantage  by  never  understanding  you ;  there  was  Jem  White, 
the  author  of  Falsta/'s  Letters,  who  the  other  day  left  this 
dull  world  to  go  in  search  of  more  kindred  spirits,  'turning  like 
the  latter  end  of  a  lover's  lute ' ;  there  was  Ayrton,  who  some- 
times dropped  in,  the  Will  Honeycomb  of  our  set ;  and  Mrs. 
Reynolds,  who,  being  of  a  quiet  turn,  loved  to  hear  a  noisy 
debate.  An  utterly  uninformed  person  might  have  supposed 
this  a  scene  of  vulgar  confusion  and  uproar.  While  the 
most  critical  question  was  pending,  while  the  most  difficult 
problem  in  philosophy  was  solving,  Phillips  cried  out, '  That's 
game,'  and  Martin  Burney  muttered  a  quotation  over  the  last 
remains  of  a  veal  pie  at  a  side-table.  Once,  and  once  only, 
the  literary  interest  overcame  the  general.  For  Coleridge  was 
riding  the  high  German  horse,  and  demonstrating  the  cate- 
gories of  the  transcendental  philosophy  to  the  author  of  the 
Road  to  Ruin;  who  insisted  on  his  knowledge  of  German 
and  German  metaphysics,  having  read  the  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason  in  the  original.  '  My  dear  Mr.  Holcroft,'  said  Cole- 
ridge, in  a  tone  of  infinitely  provoking  conciliation,  'you 
really  put  me  in  mind  of  a  sweet  pretty  German  girl,  about 
fifteen,  that  I  met  with  in  the  Hartz  forest  in  Germany,  and 
who  one  day,  as  I  was  reading  the  Limits  of  the  Knowable 
and  the  Unknowable,  the  profoundest  of  all  his  works,  with 
great  attention,  came  behind  my  chair,  and  leaning  over,  said, 
"  What,  you  read  Kant  ?  Why,  /  that  am  a  German  born 
don't  understand  him  !  " '  This  was  too  much  to  bear ;  and 
Holcroft,  starting  up,  called  out  in  no  measured  tone,  '  Mr. 
Coleridge,  you  are  the  most  eloquent  man  I  ever  met  with, 
and  the  most  troublesome  with  your  eloquence  ! '  Phillips 
held  the  cribbage-peg  that  was  to  mark  him  game  suspended 
in  his  hand,  and  the  whist  table  was  silent  for  a  moment.  I 
saw  Holcroft  downstairs ;  and  on  coming  to  the  landing-place 
in  Mitre  Court,  he  stopped  me  to  observe  that  '  he  thought 
Mr.  Coleridge  a  very  clever  man,  with  a  great  command  of 
language,  but  that  he  feared  he  did  not  always  affix  very 
precise  ideas  to  the  words  he  used.'  After  he  was  gone  we 


124  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

had  our  laugh  out,  and  went  on  with  the  argument  on  the 
nature  of  Reason,  and  Imagination,  and  the  Will.  I  wish  I 
could  find  a  publisher  for  it ;  it  would  make  a  supplement 
to  the  Biographia  Liter  aria  in  a  volume  and  half  octavo." * 

Hazlitt's  finances  were  never  prosperous ;  but  though 
not  a  good  accountant,  he  was  a  practical  economist, 
his  tastes  being  simple  and  his  habits  inexpensive, 
though  two  ounces  at  breakfast  and  two  at  tea-time 
of  Souchong,  at  twelve  shillings  a  pound,  bought  at 
Robinson's  in  Piccadilly,  must  have  cost  a  good  deal 
more  by  the  end  of  the  year  than  Lamb's  porter.  As  a 
journalist  and  dramatic  critic  he  earned  a  fair  wage ; 
and  from  1814  to  the  end  of  his  life  he  was  a  regular, 
and  until  the  advent  of  Macaulay,  the  most  brilliant, 
contributor  to  the  Edinburgh  Review.  Hardly  any  man 
is  altogether  free  from  the  taint  of  respectability ;  and 
there  is  something  half  touching,  half  ludicrous,  in  the 
pride  Hazlitt  always  had  in  becoming  and  remaining 
a  contributor  to  the  "  Blue  and  Buff,"  although,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  he  wrote  far  better  for  Hunt's  Yellow 
Dwarf  than  ever  he  did  for  Jeffrey  in  the  Edinburgh. 

His  income  from  all  sources  was  never  large,  five  or 
six  hundred  a  year  at  the  most ;  and  as  Mrs.  Hazlitt 
had  no  domestic  gifts,  it  is  not  surprising  to  come 
across  traces  of  distress  and  anxiety.  The  philosophic 
Bentham  seems  so  far  to  have  forgotten  his  abhorrence 
of  attorneys  and  our  absurd  juridical  system,  as  to 
put  an  execution  for  rent  into  Milton's  house;  and, 
when  remonstrated  with,  to  have  excused  himself  by 
saying  he  had  never  heard  of  Hazlitt  as  an  author, 
and  regarded  him  only  as  a  tenant.  And  yet  the  old 

1 '  On  the  Conversation  of  Authors.'  —  The  Plain  Speaker. 


vii.]  LITE  AND  LECTURES  125 

man  had  visited  Leigh  Hunt  in  prison;  and  finding 
the  author  of  Rimini  playing  battledore  and  shuttle- 
cock with  his  jailer,  not  only  watched  the  game  with 
interest,  but  at  its  close  volunteered  a  practical  reform 
in  the  constitution  of  shuttlecocks,  which  struck  the 
jailer  as  excellent,  and  has  remained  unattended  to 
from  that  day  to  this. 

But  Hazlitt' s  money  matters,  like  his  domestic  affairs, 
might  have  been  worse  than  they  were.  He  was  never 
in  prison  for  debt,  or  even  inside  a  sponging-house,  as 
was  Dr.  Johnson. 

His  last  work  as  a  dramatic  critic  was  done  for  the 
Times,  a  paper  which,  though  it  abused  Bonaparte, 
managed  to  stroke  Hazlitt  the  right  way ;  for  in  his 
preface  to  his  View  of  the  English  Stage  (1818)  he  advises 
"  any  one  who  has  an  ambition  to  write,  and  to  write 
his  best  in  the  periodical  press,  to  get,  if  he  can,  a  posi- 
tion in  the  Times  newspaper,  the  editor  of  which  is  a 
man  of  business,  and  not  a  man  of  letters.  He  may 
write  there  as  long  and  as  good  articles  as  he  can  with- 
out being  turned  out  for  it." 

This  is  handsomely  put,  though  whether  Hazlitt 
meant  to  give  pleasure  to  Mr.  Walter,  or  pain  to  Mr. 
Perry,  it  were  rash  to  affirm. 

Mr.  Alsager,  who  was  at  this  time  the  commercial 
editor  of  the  Times,  was  also  on  the  Committee  of  the 
Surrey  Institution  in  the  Blackfriars  Road,  Mr.  P.  G. 
Patmore  being  the  secretary.  On  Mr.  Alsager's 
introduction,  Hazlitt  proposed  to  the  Committee  to 
deliver  a  course  of  lectures  in  the  evening  on  the  Eng- 
lish Poets.  The  offer  was  accepted,  and  the  lectures 
delivered,  and,  proving  successful,  two  other  courses 
followed,  and  the  three  courses  form  three  volumes :  — 


126  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

I.   Lectures  on  the  English  Poets.     1818. 
II.   Lectures  on  the  English  Comic  Writers.    1819. 

III.   Lectures  on  the  Dramatic  Literature  of  the  Age 
of  Elizabeth.     1820. 

These  poetical  lectures  were  better  attended  than 
the  metaphysical  ones  of  1812;  but  the  number  of 
persons  likely  to  turn  out  on  January  evenings  to 
hear  a  journalist,  and  the  late  dramatic  critic  of  the 
Chronicle,  discourse  on  Shakespeare  and  Milton  in  the 
Blackfriars  Road,  could  never  be  large.  Coleridge  was 
again  lecturing,  sometimes  on  the  very  same  evening, 
in  a  small  hall  in  Flower-de-luce  Court,  off  Fetter  Lane. 
Two  such  lecturers  at  Coleridge  and  Hazlitt  are  not  on 
Major  Pond's  list,  but  the  great  world  never  gets  the 
best  of  anything  —  it  always  waits  too  long. 

Mr.  Patmore,  in  his  Friends  and  Acquaintances 
(1854),  says  he  remembers  walking  home  to  York 
Street  with  Hazlitt  after  the  first  lecture,  and  how 
at  first  Hazlitt  declined  to  take  the  proffered  arm  of 
the  secretary;  but  on  its  being  pressed  upon  him, 
took  hold  of  it  "  as  if  it  had  been  a  bar  of  hot  iron, 
and  fingered  it  gingerly." 

Like  most  lecturers,  Hazlitt  had  to  put  up  as  best 
he  could  with  his  audiences.  The  motives  that  prompt 
men  and  women  to  go  to  lectures  on  winter  nights 
are  varied,  and  include  many  which  have  nothing  to 
do  with  respect  for  the  lecturer  or  interest  in  his 
subject.  Talfourd's  account  of  the  lectures  is  too 
good  to  be  omitted:  — 

"Mr.  Hazlitt  delivered  three  courses  of  lectures  at  the 
Surrey  Institution,  to  the  matter  of  which  we  have  repeatedly 
alluded  —  on  'The  English  Poets,'  on  'The  English  Comic 


viz.]  LIFE  AND  LECTURES  127 

Writers,'  and  on  '  The  Age  of  Elizabeth '  —  before  audiences 
with  whom  he  had  but  '  an  imperfect  sympathy.'  They  con- 
sisted chiefly  of  Dissenters,  who  agreed  with  him  in  his  hatred 
of  Lord  Castlereagh,  but  who  '  loved  no  plays ' ;  of  Quakers, 
who  approved  him  as  the  opponent  of  Slavery  and  Capital 
Punishment,  but  who  '  heard  no  music ' ;  of  citizens,  devoted 
to  the  main  chance,  who  had  a  hankering  after  'the  im- 
provement of  the  mind,'  but  to  whom  his  favourite  doctrine 
of  its  natural  disinterestedness  was  a  riddle ;  of  a  few  enemies, 
who  came  to  sneer ;  and  a  few  friends,  who  were  eager  to  learn 
and  to  admire.  The  comparative  insensibility  of  the  bulk  of 
his  audience  to  his  finest  passages  sometimes  provoked  him  to 
awaken  their  attention  by  points  which  broke  the  train  of  his 
discourse,  after  which  he  could  make  himself  amends  by  some 
abrupt  paradox  which  might  set  their  prejudices  on  edge,  and 
make  them  fancy  they  were  shocked.  He  startled  many  of 
them  at  the  onset  by  observing  that  since  Jacob's  dream 
'  the  heavens  have  gone  further  off  and  become  astronomical,' 
a  fine  extravagance,  which  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  who  had 
grown  astronomical  themselves  under  the  preceding  lecturer 
felt  called  on  to  resent  as  an  attack  on  their  severer  studies. 
When  he  read  a  well-known  extract  from  Cowper,  comparing 
a  poorer  cottager  with  Voltaire,  and  had  pronounced  the  line 
'  a  truth  the  brilliant  Frenchman  never  knew,'  they  broke  into 
a  joyous  shout  of  self-gratulation,  that  they  were  so  much 
wiser  than  a  wicked  Frenchman.  When  he  passed  by  Mrs. 
Hannah  More  with  observing  that  '  she  had  written  a  great 
deal  which  he  had  never  read,'  a  voice  gave  expression  to  the 
general  commiseration  and  surprise  by  calling  out,  '  More  pity 
for  you  ! '  They  were  confounded  at  his  reading,  with  more 
emphasis  perhaps  than  discretion,  Gay's  epigrammatic  lines 
on  Sir  Kichard  Blackmore,  in  which  scriptural  persons  are 
freely  hitched  into  rhyme ;  but  he  went  doggedly  on  to  the 
end,  and,  by  his  perseverance,  baffled  those  who,  if  he  acknow- 
ledged himself  wrong  by  stopping,  would  have  hissed  him 
without  mercy.  He  once  had  an  edifying  advantage  over 
them.  He  was  enumerating  the  humanities  which  endeared 
Dr.  Johnson  to  his  mind ;  and  at  the  close  of  an  agreeable 
catalogue  mentioned,  as  last  and  noblest,  'his  carrying  the 


128  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

poor  victim  of  disease  and  dissipation  on  his  back  through 
Fleet  Street,"  at  which  a  titter  arose  from  some,  who  were 
struck  by  the  picture  as  ludicrous,  and  a  murmur  from  others, 
who  deemed  the  allusion  unfit  for  ears  polite.  He  paused 
for  an  instant,  and  then  added  in  his  sturdiest  and  most 
impressive  manner,  '  an  act  which  realises  the  parable  of  the 
Good  Samaritan,'  at  which  his  moral  and  delicate  hearers 
shrank  rebuked  into  deep  silence.  He  was  not  eloquent  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  term ;  for  his  thoughts  were  too  weighty 
to  be  moved  along  by  the  shallow  stream  of  feeling  which  an 
evening's  excitement  can  rouse.  He  wrote  all  his  lectures, 
and  read  them  as  they  were  written ;  but  his  deep  voice  and 
earnest  manner  suited  his  matter  well.  He  seemed  to  dig 
into  his  subject  —  and  not  in  vain.  In  delivering  his  longer 
quotations,  he  had  scarcely  continuity  enough  for  the  versi- 
fication of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  '  with  linked  sweetness 
long  drawn  out ' ;  but  he  gave  Pope's  brilliant  satire  and 
divine  compliments,  which  are  usually  complete  within  the 
couplet,  with  an  elegance  and  point  which  the  poet  himself 
would  have  felt  as  their  highest  praise." l 

Hazlitt  had,  however,  one  auditor  who  would  have 
de-vulgarised  Tammany  Hall,  for  John  Keats  regu- 
larly attended  the  first  course,  and  wrote :  "  Hazlitt' s 
last  was  on  Gray,  Collins,  Young,  etc.,  and  he  gave  a 
very  fine  piece  of  discriminating  criticism  on  Swift, 
Voltaire,  and  Rabelais.  I  was  very  disappointed  with 
his  treatment  of  Chatterton."  What  Hazlitt  had  said 
about  Chatterton  was  this :  "  He  did  not  show  extraor- 
dinary powers  of  genius,  but  extraordinary  precoc- 
ity. Nor  do  I  believe  he  would  have  written  better 
had  he  lived.  He  knew  this  himself,  or  he  would 
have  lived."  It  is  easy  to  understand  this  rough-fibred 
sentence,  which  smacks  of  Chelsea,  falling  harshly  on 
the  sensitive  ear  of  Keats,  who,  with  nothing  yet  done, 

1  See  Literary  Remains,  i,  cxxvii. 


vn.]  LIFE  AND  LECTURES  129 

had  but  three  feverish  years  to  live,  in  which,  however, 
he  was  to  build  for  himself  an  immortality  of  fame. 

These  lectures  of  Hazlitt's  must  have  had  many 
students;  for  it  is  impossible  to  read  them  without 
noticing  how  firmly  he  has  managed  to  imbed,  or  pot 
out,  his  ideas  and  opinions  about  the  English  poets 
into  the  clay  of  our  compositions.  To-day  all  ordinary, 
well-read,  sensible  people,  the  commonplace  critics 
about  whom  Hazlitt  wrote  in  the  Round  Table  almost 
as  amusingly  as  Dr.  Johnson  had  done  before  him  in 
the  Rambler,  entertain  as  their  own  the  lecturer's 
opinions  about  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  Gray  and  Collins, 
Swift  and  Goldsmith ;  but  in  1818,  when  Dr.  Darwin 
and  Hayley  were  still  preferred  to  Cowper  and  Burns, 
whilst  Akenside  (the  favourite  poet  of  Hannah  More) 
and  Young  loomed  large  in  the  general  mind,  these 
opinions  of  Hazlitt's  were  very  far  from  being  "in 
widest  commonalty  spread." 

Hazlitt's  success  in  circulating  his  opinions  is  largely 
attributable  to  the  fact  that,  like  his  sworn  admirer 
in  our  own  day,  Mr.  Bagehot,  he  has  always  been  a 
favourite  author  with  journalists  and  ready-writers. 
His  views  are  infectious,  his  style  attractive,  and  his 
words  very  quotable  with  or  without  acknowledg- 
ment. Indeed,  it  is  very  hard  always  to  remember 
when  you  are  quoting  Hazlitt.  No  more  original 
miscellaneous  writer  can  easily  be  named  than  this 
same  Mr.  Bagehot,  and  yet  he  occasionally  gives  you 
half  a  page  of  Hazlitt  without  a  word  said  about  it. 
C.ompare  Bagehot's  description  of  Southey  in  his  essay 
on  "  Shakespeare  "  (Literary  Studies,  i.  137)  with  Haz- 
litt's sketch  of  Southey  in  The  Spirit  of  the  Age,  and 
what  I  mean  will  be  made  plain.  Gracious  rills  from 


130  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

the  Hazlitt  watershed  have  flowed  in  all  directions, 
fertilising  a  dry  and  thirsty  land.  You  can  mark 
their  track  as,  to  quote  Cowper's  beautiful  lines  about 
real  rills,  they 

"  lose  themselves  at  length 
In  matted  grass  that  with  a  livelier  green 
Betrays  the  secret  of  their  silent  course." 

Hazlitt  approached  his  task  as  a  critic  of  poetry  in 
a  manly  spirit  of  appreciation.  He  liked  poetry  as 
he  liked  Salisbury  Plain  and  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Titian 
and  Claude,  for  the  pleasure  it  gave  him  and  the  good 
it  did  him.  Poetry  tickled  his  ear,  excited  his  fancy, 
moved  his  heart.  He  was  not  a  regular  student,  origi- 
nal research  was  no  more  in  his  way  than  in  John- 
son's. Indeed,  he  would  have  done  better  had  he 
taken  more  pains. 

He  was  quite  above  the  miserable  affectation  of  pre- 
tending to  care  only  for  poetry.  He  cared,  as  we 
know,  for  a  great  many  other  things.  "  Poetry,"  he 
says  in  his  essay  on  "People  with  One  Idea,"  "is  a 
very  fine  thing,  but  there  are  other  things  besides." 
"I  deny,"  he  wrote  in  his  preface  to  the  Political 
Tracts,  ".that  liberty  and  slavery  are  convertible  terms; 
that  right  and  wrong,  truth  and  falsehood,  plenty  and 
famine,  the  comforts  or  wretchedness  of  a  people,  are 
matters  of  perfect  indifference."  For  Hazlitt,  poetry 
was  no  mere 

"  Stretched  metre  of  an  antique  song  "  ; 

it  was  food  for  the  mind,  matter  for  the  heart — some- 
thing that  helped  him  to  go  on  living,  thinking,  loving, 
and  it  must  be  added,  hating.  He  loved  Milton  for  his 


vii.]  LIFE  AND  LECTURES  131 

republicanism  at  least  as  much  as  for  his  versification ; 
and  he  certainly  would  have  found  something  to  say 
for  Madoc  and  the  Curse  of  Kehama  had  not  Southey 
deserted  his  first  love  and  taken  up  with  the  false 
Duessa,  that  hateful  Legitimacy,  by  which  word  Haz- 
litt  always  means  the  cause  of  those  European  kings 
with  whose  crowns  Bonaparte  had  once  played  so 
glorious  a  game  of  bowls. 

Fine  literary  folk  who  think  a  new  play  by  Shake- 
speare would  be  cheaply  purchased  with  the  Bill  of 
Rights  will  never  be  quite  reconciled  to  Hazlitt. 

In  both  poetry  and  prose  Hazlitt's  preferences  were 
frankly  avowed  and  his  dislikes  outspoken.  He  never 
hesitated  to  say  as  an  author  what  he  felt  as  a  man. 
He  belonged  to  no  school  or  coterie.  His  knowledge 
and  taste  for  poetry  was  increased  and  purified  by  his 
friendship  with  Lamb ;  and  he  had  felt  the  stimulus 
of  Coleridge  in  poetry  as  well  as  in  metaphysics  and 
politics,  but  he  remained  his  own  man  —  a  solitary 
and  independent  figure.  He  liked  Blair's  Grave  and 
Warton's  Sonnets,  and  he  said  so.  Sir  Philip  Sidney's 
Arcadia  bored  him  to  death,  and  he  said  so.  Sir 
Thomas  Browne's  strained  fancifulness  and  jargonised 
speech  teased  him,  and  he  said  so.  On  the  other 
hand,  what  member  of  the  Anglican  Church  has  so 
bathed  the  name  of  Jeremy  Taylor  in  the  sunshine 
of  eloquent  appreciation  as  has  this  Jacobinical  son 
of  a  Socinian  preacher? 

In  singling  out  Hazlitt's  treatment  of  Swift  for  espe- 
cial praise,  Keats  showed  that  recognition  of  the  great 
merits  of  Swift's  versification  which  the  author  of 
the  Ode  to  Autumn  shared  with  the  author  of  (Enone. 
"  There  is  not  only,"  said  Hazlitt,  "  a  dry  humour,  an 


132  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

exquisite  tone  of  irony  in  these  productions  [the  Imi- 
tations of  Horace  and  the  Dean's  verses  on  his  own 
death],  but  there  is  a  touching,  unpretending  pathos 
mixed  up  with  the  most  whimsical  and  eccentric 
strokes  of  satire."  Glorious  John  was  wrong  for  once 
when  he  said,  "Cousin  Swift,  you  will  never  be  a 
poet,"  but  perhaps  Dryden  meant  a  poet  "  in  the 
grand  style.'1 

Young,  Hazlitt  had  the  courage  to  dismiss  as  a 
gloomy  epigrammatist  who  had  abused  great  powers 
of  thought  and  language.  Of  Young's  powers  of  lan- 
guage there  can  be  no  doubt  —  he  served  his  turn  and 
stirred  to  the  pitch  of  enthusiasm  the  boyish  admira- 
tion of  Edmund  Burke.  The  genius  of  Collins,  some- 
what of  a  test  case  in  1818,  Hazlitt  proudly  hails ;  and 
he  puts  him  above  Gray,  his  usual  yoke-fellow  in  the 
publisher's  harness,  though  Hazlitt  was  very  glad  to 
extol  the  merits  of  the  Elegy,  since  it  enabled  him  to 
have  a  sly  dig  at  Wordsworth,  who  once  undertook 
to  show  that  the  language  of  that  famous  piece  is 
"  unintelligible,"  yet,  says  Hazlitt  dryly,  "  it  has  been 
understood."  To  Dryden,  Hazlitt  fails  to  do  complete 
justice,  but  his  Pope  is  perfect.  Gay,  he  oddly  pre- 
fers to  Prior.  Akenside,  he  banished  in  a  sentence, 
which  must  have  made  many  of  his  hearers  very  angry, 
for  in  liberal  Nonconf orming  circles  Akenside  was  long 
considered  only  second  to  Milton. 

With  our  earlier  poets  Hazlitt  had  but  a  haphazard 
acquaintance.  The  poetry  he  had  not  read  would 
fill  many  volumes.  Donne's  poems  he  evidently  did 
not  know  ;  and  though  he  displays  his  critical  gift  by 
his  treatment  of  Marvell,  he  frankly  admitted  he  had 
never  read  the  "Ode  upon  Cromwell's  Keturn  from 


vn.]  LIFE   AND   LECTURES  133 

Ireland,"  which  contains  the  famous  lines  upon  the 
death  of  the  king. 

For  Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  Suckling,  and 
Wither  he  exhibits  an  unexpected  tenderness,  prob- 
ably attributable  to  his  spending  an  evening  with 
Charles  Lamb.  The  secret  of  Herrick's  charm  was 
never  revealed  to  him. 

For  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  other  than  Shake- 
speare, Hazlitt  had  no  feeling,  and  with  their  writings 
but  small  familiarity.  He  shared  Landor's  indiffer- 
ence. Ben  Jonson  he  could  not  but  greatly  admire, 
but  he  had  made  no  study  of  his  plays,  which  have 
been  called  works.  Yet  for  all  this,  Hazlitt's  intro- 
ductory lecture  to  these  dramatists  is  a  splendid  per- 
formance, and  in  one  of  the  most  perfunctory  of  the 
lectures  he  showed  his  fine  poetic  feeling  by  quoting 
from  John  Lyly's  Alexander  and  Campaspe  the  Apelles 
song  "  Cupid  and  my  Campaspe  played." 

It  was  probably  Hazlitt' s  quotation  that  led  to  this 
superb  lyric  being  included  in  Chambers's  Encyclopedia 
of  English  Literature,  a  popular  collection  which  did 
more  in  its  day  to  instil  good  taste  and  the  love  of 
literature  in  the  minds  of  young  England  and  Scot- 
land than  Church,  State,  or  University. 

As  for  the  four  dramatists,  Wycherley,  Congreve, 
Vanbrugh,  and  Farquhar,  Hazlitt  is  probably  the 
last  critic  likely  to  be  read  who  writes  about  their 
plays  with  a  complete  abandonment  to  their  point  of 
view.  In  1818  the  dramas  of  these  distinguished  wits, 
or  some  of  them,  still  held  the  boards.  "Munden's 
Foresight,"  wrote  Hazlitt,  "  if  it  is  not  just  the  thing, 
is  a  wonderful  rich  and  powerful  piece  of  comic  act- 
ing. His  look  is  planet-struck,  his  dress  and  appear- 


134  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

ance  like  one  of  the  signs  of  the  zodiac  taken  down. 
Nothing  can  be  more  bewildered,  and  it  only  wants 
a  little  more  helplessness,  a  little  more  of  the  doating 
querulous  garrulity  of  the  age,  to  be  all  that  one  con- 
ceives of  the  superannuated,  star-gazing  original." 
Munden  in  Congreve's  Foresight  evidently  did  not  put 
Hazlitt  out.  This  is  true  dramatic  criticism.  Milla- 
mant  in  Congreve's  Way  of  the  World  is  one  of  Hazlitt's 
many  literary  loves.  He  describes  her  in  detail,  and 
declares  that  he  would  rather  have  seen  Mrs.  Abing- 
don's  Millamant  than  any  Kosalind  that  ever  appeared 
on  the  stage.  Mrs.  Abingdon  he  never  saw  ;  but  Mrs. 
Jordan,  who  used  to  play  Miss  Prue  in  Love  for  Love, 
Miss  Peggy  in  The  Country  Wife,  Miss  Hoyden  in  the 
Relapse,  and  Corinna  in  the  Confederacy,  he  had  seen 
in  all  these  parts,  and  never  could  make  up  his  mind 
which  was  best.  Hazlitt  maintains  that  Miss  Peggy 
is  a  character  that  will  live  for  ever,  "so  built  is  it 
on  first  principles  and  brought  out  in  the  fullest 
broadest  manner."  He  reminds  us  how  Sir  John 
Brute  in  The  Provoked  Wife  was  one  of  Garrick's 
favourite  characters,  and  he  dates  the  decline  of 
English  comedy  from  the  death  of  Farquhar  in 
1709. 

It  is  very  necessary  to  keep  on  one's  guard  against 
the  sham  raptures  of  men  of  literary  genius.  Great 
gifts  of  expression  always  seeks  employment;  and  if 
writers  so  endowed  wish  to  describe  themselves  as 
basking  in  glorious  sunshine,  they  will  not  be  de- 
terred from  doing  so  by  the  fact  that  at  the  moment 
of  writing  the  rain  is  falling  heavily  to  the  ground. 
It  is  Talfourd,  I  think,  who  advises  Hazlitt's  readers 
"  to  allow  for  the  wind." 


vii.]  LIFE   AND  LECTURES  135 

But  we  are  safe  in  assuming  Hazlitt's  enthusiasm 
for  these  four  worthies  to  be  quite  genuine,  vouched 
for  as  it  is  in  a  variety  of  ways.  The-  reason  why  but 
few  people  now  living  can  share  Hazlitt's  intense  en- 
joyment of  these  playwrights  is  not  any  failure  to 
appreciate  their  wit,  or  the  consummate  skill  of  their 
dialogue,  of  which  Sheridan's  is  often  but  a  metallic 
echo,  nor  is  it  any  unconquerable  aversion  to  the  occa- 
sional coarseness  of  their  speech  or  frivolity  of  their 
tone  —  it  is  their  heartlessness,  or  rather  their  stony- 
heartedness, which  dries  up  in  us  the  capacity  to  take 
any  pleasure  in  their  plays.  Love  for  Love  is  perhaps 
the  wittiest  play  ever  written ;  but  in  the  first  scene 
the  wittiest  character  in  it  displays  such  sheer  brutal- 
ity and  callosity  as  to  make  a  modern  sick  and  able  to 
read  no  more  that  day. 

Hazlitt's  lectures  are  animated,  manly  discourses, 
full  of  substance  and  sense,  and  abounding  in  passages 
of  eloquence  and  fancy  :  — 

"Many  people  suppose  that  poetry  is  something  to  be 
found  only  in  books,  contained  in  lines  of  ten  syllables,  with 
like  endings ;  but  wherever  there  is  a  sense  of  beauty,  or 
power,  or  harmony,  as  in  the  motion  of  a  wave  of  the  sea, 
in  the  growth  of  a  flower,  that  'spreads  its  sweet  leaves 
through  the  air,  and  dedicates  its  beauty  to  the  sun,'  there 
is  poetry.  .  .  . 

"  The  child  is  a  poet,  in  fact,  when  he  first  plays  at  hide- 
and-seek,  or  repeats  the  story  of  Jack  the  Giantkiller ;  the 
shepherd  boy  is  a  poet  when  he  first  crowns  his  mistress  with 
a  garland  of  flowers ;  the  countryman  when  he  stops  to  look 
at  the  rainbow ;  the  city  apprentice  when  he  gazes  after  the 
Lord  Mayor's  show ;  the  miser  when  he  hugs  his  gold ;  the 
courtier  who  builds  his  hopes  upon  a  smile ;  the  savage  who 
paints  his  idol  with  blood  ;  the  slave  who  worships  a  tyrant, 
or  the  tyrant  who  fancies  himself  a  god;  the  vain,  the 


136  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

ambitious,  the  proud,  the  choleric  man,  the  hero  and  the 
coward,  the  beggar  and  the  king,  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
the  young  and  the  old,  all  live  in  a  world  of  their  own  mak- 
ing ;  and  the  poet  does  no  more  than  describe  what  all  the 
others  think  and  act." 

"  Poetry  is  not  a  branch  of  authorship ;  it  is  the  stuff  of 
which  our  life  is  made." 

I  will  quote  another  passage  which  reminds  me  of  a 
corresponding  passage  in  one  of  Dr.  Newman's  books, 
and  indeed  the  resemblance  is  often  close  between 
these  two  animated  authors :  — 

"  The  poet  of  nature  is  one  who,  from  the  elements  of 
beauty,  of  power,  and  of  passion  in  his  own  breast,  sympa- 
thises with  whatever  is  beautiful,  and  grand,  and  impas- 
sioned in  nature,  in  its  simple  majesty,  in  its  immediate 
appeal  to  the  senses,  to  the  thoughts  and  hearts  of  all  men  ; 
so  that  the  poet  of  nature,  by  the  truth,  and  depth,  and 
harmony  of  his  mind,  may  be  said  to  hold  communion  with 
the  very  soul  of  nature ;  to  be  identified  with,  and  to  fore- 
know, and  to  record,  the  feelings  of  all  men,  at  all  times 
and  places,  as  they  are  liable  to  the  same  impressions ;  and 
to  exert  the  same  power  over  the  minds  of  his  readers  that 
nature  does.  He  sees  things  in  their  eternal  beauty,  for  he 
sees  them  as  they  are;  he  feels  them  in  their  universal 
interest,  for  he  feels  them  as  they  aifect  the  first  principles 
of  his  and  our  common  nature.  Such  was  Homer,  such  was 
Shakespeare,  whose  works  will  last  as  long  as  nature,  be- 
cause they  are  a  copy  of  the  indestructible  forms  and  ever- 
lasting impulses  of  nature,  welling  out  from  the  bosom  as 
from  a  perennial  spring,  or  stamped  upon  the  senses  by  the 
hand  of  their  Maker.  The  power  of  the  imagination  in  them 
is  the  representative  power  of  all  nature.  It  has  its  centre 
in  the  human  soul,  and  makes  the  circuit  of  the  universe." 

Nor  will  any  but  the  veriest  curmudgeon  find  fault 
with  a  child  of  the  Eevolution  for  concluding  his  first 


vii.]  LIFE   AND  LECTURES  137 

lecture  on  poetry  in  general  with  some  remarks  on 
"  four  of  the  principal  works  of  poetry  in  the  world  — 
Homer,  the  Bible,  Dante,  and  Ossian." 

"  We  turn  the  weeding-clips  aside, 
And  spare  the  symbol  dear." 

If  Hazlitt  loved  Ossian,  so  did  Goethe. 

Selma,  Sagar,  and  Malvina,  all  are  forgotten;  but 
as  we  still  chatter  about  style,  one  quotation  must  be 
assigned  to  that  subject :  — 

"Arbuthnot's  style  is  distinguished  from  that  of  his 
contemporaries  even  by  a  greater  degree  of  terseness  and  con- 
ciseness. He  leaves  out  every  superfluous  word ;  is  sparing 
of  connecting  particles  and  introductory  phrases ;  uses  always 
the  simplest  forms  of  construction ;  and  is  more  a  master  of 
the  idiomatic  peculiarities  and  internal  resources  of  the  lan- 
guage than  almost  any  other  writer.  There  is  a  research  in 
the  choice  of  a  plain,  as  well  as  of  an  ornamental  or  learned, 
style ;  and,  in  fact,  a  great  deal  more.  Among  common 
English  words,  there  may  be  ten  expressing  the  same  thing 
with  different  degrees  of  force  and  propriety,  and  only  one  of 
them  the  very  word  we  want,  because  it  is  the  only  one  that 
answers  exactly  with  the  idea  we  have  in  our  minds.  Each 
word  in  familiar  use  has  a  set  of  associations  and  shades  of 
meaning  attached  to  it,  and  distinguished  from  each  other 
by  inveterate  custom  ;  and  it  is  in  having  the  whole  of  these 
at  our  command,  and  in  knowing  which  to  choose,  as  they  are 
called  for  by  the  occasion,  that  the  perfection  of  a  pure  con- 
versational prose  style  consists." 

In  the  last  lecture  of  the  first  course  Hazlitt  boldly 
tackles  "The  Living  Poets."  The  fact  that  a  man 
was  alive  never  seemed  to  Hazlitt  any  reason  for  not 
saying  what  you  thought  of  him  in  print.  Hazlitt's 
essays  came  to  be  almost  as  much  dreaded  as  Pope's 


138  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

couplets.  The  living  poets  if  they  saw  Hazlitt's  pro- 
spectus must  have  felt  uneasy.  The  poet  Kogers  is 
most  uncivilly  treated;  his  breakfasts  count  simply 
for  nothing ;  he  is  "  an  elegant  but  feeble  writer,"  and 
there  is  no  fault  to  be  found  with  the  Pleasures  of 
Memory,  except  "a  want  of  taste  and  genius";  the 
thoughts  are  "  obvious,"  the  words  "  tinsel,"  and  the 
verses  are  poetry  "  chiefly  because  no  particle,  line,  or 
syllable  reads  like  prose."  The  poet  Campbell  is 
unfairly  treated,  and  declared  to  belong  to  the  same 
"  hot-pressed  superfme-wove  paper "  school  as  the 
poet  Kogers.  "He  is  a  timid  poet;  and  when  he 
launches  a  sentiment  that  you  think  will  float  him 
triumphantly  for  once  to  the  bottom  of  the  stanza,  he 
stops  short  at  the  end  of  the  first  or  second  line,  and 
stands  shivering  on  the  bank  of  beauty."  This  may 
be  true ;  but  Campbell's  verses  on  Hohenlinden  have 
more  than  "considerable  spirit  and  animation,"  nor 
ought  the  Battle  of  the  Baltic  to  have  been  forgotten. 
What,  however,  probably  annoyed  Campbell  most  was 
the  accusation  that  in  altering  Blair's  lines  — 

"  Its  visits, 
Like  those  of  angels,  short  and  far  between," 

into 

"  Like  angel's  visits,  few  and  far  between," 

he  had  spoilt  them.  " '  Few '  and  '  far  between '  are 
the  same  thing."  It  was  nastily  put,  and  made  an 
enemy  for  life. 

Tom  Moore  gets  off  very  easily,  though  they  were 
to  quarrel  afterwards  over  "  The  Fudge  Family." 
Hazlitt  liked  his  sentimental  vein  of  fluttering  fancy 


vii.]  LIFE   AND  LECTURES  139 

"  glittering  in  the  sun,"  and  said  he  ought  never  to 
have  written  "  Lalla  Rookh "  for  three  thousand 
guineas,  which  is  a  hard  saying.  Had  he  written  it 
for  nothing,  one  might  have  wondered. 

Had  Byron  not  wavered  in  his  allegiance  to  Napo- 
leon, he  would  have  been  a  greater  favourite  with 
Hazlitt  than  he  was ;  for  they  were  both  children  of 
the  Revolution,  akin  to  Ossian  and  to  Werther  and  the 
rest  of  that  company  of  winds  which,  though 

"  Upgathered  now  like  sleeping  flowers," 

once  blew  "  great  guns."  They  quarrelled,  as  relations 
sometimes  will,  over  an  inheritance.  But  Hazlitt  is 
Byronic  enough  in  his  description  of  the  poet  to  sat- 
isfy the  most  fancy-inflamed  mantua-maker  that  ever 
in  her  garret  by  a  spluttering  farthing-dip  pored  over 
the  Corsair  :  — 

"  His  brow  collects  the  scattered  gloom,  his  eye  flashes  livid 
fire  that  withers  and  consumes.  But  still  we  watch  the 
progress  of  the  scathing  bolt  with  interest,  and  mark  the  ruin 
it  leaves  behind  with  awe.  .  .  .  He  chooses  elements  and 
agents  congenial  to  his  mind — the  dark  and  glittering  ocean, 
the  frail  bark  hurrying  before  the  storm,  pirates  and  men  that 
'  house  on  the  wild  sea  with  wild  usages.'  He  gives  the 
tumultuous  eagerness  of  action  and  the  fixed  despair  of 
thought.  In  vigour  of  style  and  force  of  conception  he  in 
one  sense  surpasses  every  writer  of  the  present  day." 

Great  indeed  was  Byron.  Just  as  a  mournful 
Scotch  proprietor  judges  of  the  strength  of  a  gale  of 
wind  by  walking  through  his  plantations  after  it  has 
dropped,  and  "  moaning  the  expense  "  of  many  a  fallen 
tree,  so  it  is  only  by  reading  the  lives  and  letters 
of  his  astonished  contemporaries  and  immediate 


140  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

successors  that  you  are  able  to  form  some  estimate 
of  the  force  of  Byron. 

For  Scott's  poetry  Hazlitt  had  a  true  affection, 
though  one  destined  to  be  swallowed  up  in  his  passion 
for  the  Waverley  novels. 

He  next  raises  his  hat  to  salute  Wordsworth,  "  the 
most  original  poet  now  living  " ;  he  then  read  aloud 
the  whole  of  "Hartleap  Well,"  which  was  hardly 
treating  his  audience  fairly ;  and  when  it  was  over, 
he  observed  fiercely,  "Those  who  do  not  feel  the 
beauty  and  the  force  of  this  may  save  themselves  the 
trouble  of  inquiring  further  " —  an  offer  that  was  prob- 
ably freely  accepted.  This  civility  was  suspicious. 
"  I  knew  Jock  Campbell  meant  to  hang  him  from  the 
first,"  said  a  barrister  present  at  Palmer's  trial  for 
murder  at  Stafford,  "  he  was  so  confoundedly  polite  to 
the  prisoner."  Hazlitt,  after  these  preliminaries,  pro- 
ceeded to  hang,  not  Wordsworth  indeed,  but  his  theory 
of  poetry.  "  Wordsworth  does  not  like  even  to  share 
his  reputation  with  his  subject,  for  he  would  have  it  all 
to  proceed  from  his  own  power  and  originality  of 
mind."  Hence  that  affection  for  idiot  boys  and  mad 
mothers  — 

"Now  heaven  has  placed  it  high  'mid  human  joys 
To  talk  with  elf-lock  girls  and  ragged  boys  "  (Landor), 

which  so  irritated  many  of  Wordsworth's  contem- 
poraries. "He  tolerates  only  what  he  himself  cre- 
ates ; "  and  then  follows  a  vehement  passage  uplifted 
from  one  of  his  political  articles  subsequently  re- 
printed in  the  Political  Essays.  Hazlitt  Avas  a  Conser- 
vative in  poetry,  nor  was  he  ever  a  true  revolutionary 
in  politics. 


vii.]  LIFE   AND   LECTURES  141 

The  lecture  on  "  Living  Poets,"  the  last  of  the  first 
series,  concludes  thus :  — 

"Coleridge's  Condones  ad  Populum,  Watchman,  etc.,  are 
dreary  trash.  Of  his  Friend  I  have  spoken  the  truth  else- 
where. But  I  may  say  of  him  here,  that  he  is  the  only  per- 
son I  ever  knew  who  answered  to  the  idea  of  a  man  of  genius. 
He  is  the  only  person  from  whom  I  ever  learned  anything. 
There  is  only  one  thing  he  could  learn  from  me  in  return,  but 
that  he  has  not.  He  was  the  first  poet  I  ever  knew.  His 
genius  at  that  time  had  angelic  wings,  and  fed  on  manna.  He 
talked  on  for  ever ;  and  you  wished  him  to  talk  on  for  ever. 
His  thoughts  did  not  seem  to  come  with  labour  and  effort ; 
but  as  if  borne  on  the  gusts  of  genius,  and  as  if  the  wings  of 
his  imagination  lifted  him  from  off  his  feet.  His  voice  rolled 
on  the  ear  like  the  pealing  organ,  and  its  sound  alone  was  the 
music  of  thought.  His  mind  was  clothed  with  wings ;  and, 
raised  on  them,  he  lifted  philosophy  to  heaven.  In  his 
descriptions  you  then  saw  the  progress  of  human  happiness 
and  liberty  in  bright  and  never-ending  succession,  like  the 
steps  of  Jacob's  ladder,  with  airy  shapes  ascending  and  de- 
scending, and  with  the  voice  of  God  at  the  top  of  the  ladder. 
And  shall  I,  who  heard  him  then,  listen  to  him  now  ?  Not 
I !  That  spell  is  broke ;  that  time  is  gone  for  ever ;  that 
voice  is  heard  no  more ;  but  still  the  recollection  comes  rush- 
ing by  with  thoughts  of  long-past  years,  and  rings  in  my  ears 
with  never-dying  sound. 

'  What  though  the  radiance  which  was  once  so  bright 
Be  now  for  ever  vanish'd  from  my  sight, 
Though  nothing  can  bring  back  the  hour 
Of  glory  in  the  grass,  of  splendour  in  the  flow'r  ; 

I  do  not  grieve,  but  rather  find 

Strength  in  what  remains  behind  ; 

In  the  primal  sympathy, 

Which  having  been,  must  ever  be  ; 

In  the  soothing  thoughts  that  spring 

Out  of  human  suffering  ; 
In  years  that  bring  the  philosophic  mind  1 ' 


142  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP.  vn. 

"  I  have  thus  gone  through  the  task  I  intended,  and  have 
come  at  last  to  the  level  ground.  I  have  felt  my  subject 
gradually  sinking  from  under  me  as  I  advanced,  and  have 
been  afraid  of  ending  in  nothing.  The  interest  has  unavoid- 
ably decreased  at  almost  every  successive  step  of  the  progress, 
like  a  play  that  has  its  catastrophe  in  the  first  or  second  act. 
This,  however,  I  could  not  help.  I  have  done  as  well  as  I 
could." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

QUABKELS,   ESSAYS,    DELUSIONS,   AND   PICTURE 
GALLERIES 

GIFFORD,  "  with  his  sword  undrawn,"  if  his  weapon 
of  offence  is  entitled  to  so  honourable  a  noun,  was 
always  lying  in  wait  for  a  new  book  by  Hazlitt ;  and  on 
the  appearance  of  the  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets,  the 
editor  of  the  Quarterly  Review  hastened  to  inform  the 
respectable  reading  public  that  the  lectures  were 
"predatory  incursions  on  truth  and  common-sense," 
threw  "  no  gleam  of  light "  upon  their  subject,  "  left 
no  trace  upon  the  mind  of  the  reader,"  being  indeed 
nothing  but  "  an  incoherent  jumble  of  grand  words." 
Hazlitt  was  declared,  like  Hannibal,  to  have  bound 
himself  by  an  oath,  not  against  Rome,  but  against 
"  accurate  reasoning,  just  observation,  and  precise,  or 
even  intelligent,  language."  * 

All  contemporary  criticism  was  not  equally  insensate. 
The  Quarterly  Review,  with  which  Scott  and  South ey 
were  proud  to  be  connected  though  powerless  to  control, 

1  Gifford  had  been  reading  Dryden :  — 

"  As  Hannibal  did  to  the  altars  come, 
Sworn  by  his  sire  a  mortal  foe  to  Rome, 
So  Shadwell  swore,  nor  should  his  vow  be  vain, 
That  he  till  death  true  dulness  would  maintain. 
And  in  his  father's  right  and  realm's  defence 
Ne'er  to  have  peace  with  wit  nor  truce  with  sense." 

—  MACFLECKNOE. 

143 


144  WILLIAM   IIAZLITT  [CHAP. 

was  by  far  the  worst  offender.  The  Scotsman  published, 
in  May  and  June  1818,  two  long  reviews,  friendly  in 
tone,  indeed  highly  laudatory,  and  at  the  same  time 
discriminative.  The  reviewer  observes  with  a  force 
every  reader  of  Hazlitt  must  appreciate,  "It  is  no 
ordinary  matter  to  peruse  a  book  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's. 
There  is  a  certain  hurry  of  the  spirit,  which  never  fails 
to  accompany  the  fine  show  of  reason  and  taste  under 
which  the  mind  is  hardly  at  leisure  to  select  beauties 
or  start  objections."  A  hurry  of  the  spirit  is  a  fine 
phrase,  very  applicable  to  Hazlitt,  who  bustles  you 
along.  The  Scotsman,  naturally  and  properly,  defends 
a  "brother  Scot,"  the  poet  Campbell,  against  the 
strictures  of  the  Southron  body. 

After  the  publication  of  the  third  course  a  reviewer 
in  the  Edinburgh  discoursed  with  skill  and  taste  con- 
cerning Hazlitt's  critical  gifts.  Hazlitt,  like  Burke,  is 
so  eloquent  himself,  that  those  who  write  about  either 
the  one  or  the  other  generally  try  to  be  so  too ;  but 
after  the  reviewer  has  got  over  the  effort  of  telling  us 
how  Hazlitt  does  not  "  dissect  the  form  to  show  the 
springs  whence  the  blood  flows,"  but  makes  us  feel 
"  in  the  sparkling  or  softened  eye,  the  wreathed  smile 
and  the  tender  bloom,"  he  becomes  more  useful,  and  it 
would  be  hard  to  improve  upon  the  following  para- 
graph :  — 

"  Hazlitt  has  no  lack  of  the  deepest  feelings,  the  profound- 
est  sentiments  of  humanity,  or  the  loftiest  aspirations  after 
ideal  good.  But  there  are  no  great  leading  principles  of  taste 
to  give  singleness  to  his  aims,  nor  any  central  points  in  his 
mind,  around  which  his  feelings  may  revolve  and  his  imagi- 
nations cluster.  There  is  no  sufficient  distinction  between  his 
intellectual  and  his  imaginative  faculties.  He  confounds  the 


vni.]  QUARRELS  145 

truths  of  imagination  with  those  of  fact ;  the  processes  of 
argument  with  those  of  feeling ;  the  immunities  of  intellect 
with  those  of  virtue.  Hence  the  seeming  inconsistency  of 
many  of  his  doctrines.  Hence  the  want  of  all  continuity  in 
his  style.  Hence  his  failure  in  producing  one  single,  harmoni- 
ous, and  lasting  impression  on  the  hearts  of  his  hearers.  He 
never  waits  to  consider  whether  a  sentiment  or  an  image  is  in 
place,  so  it  be  in  itself  striking.  That  keen  sense  of  pleasure 
in  intellectual  beauty,  which  is  the  best  charm  of  his  writings, 
is  also  his  chief  deluder.  He  cannot  resist  a  powerful  image, 
an  exquisite  quotation,  or  a  pregnant  remark,  however  it 
may  dissipate,  or  even  subvert,  the  general  feeling  which  his 
theme  should  inspire.  ...  He  will  never  be  contented  to 
touch  that  most  strange  and  curious  instrument,  the  human 
heart,  with  a  steady  aim,  but  throws  his  hand  rapidly  over  the 
chords,  mingling  strange  discord  with  '  most  eloquent  music.' 
Instead  of  conducting  us  onward  to  a  given  object,  he  opens 
so  many  delicious  prospects  by  the  wayside,  and  suffers  us  to 
gaze  at  them  so  long,  that  we  forget  the  end  of  our  journey. 
He  is  perpetually  dazzled  among  the  sunbeams  of  his  fancy, 
and  plays  with  them  in  elegant  fantasy,  when  he  should 
point  them  to  the  spots  where  they  might  fall  on  truth  and 
beauty,  and  render  them  visible  by  a  clearer  and  lovelier 
radiance  than  had  yet  revealed  them." l 

That  this  is  searching  criticism  cannot  be  denied ; 
but  Time,  that  old  arbitrator,  has,  I  think,  corrected 
the  reviewer  in  one  respect.  Hazlitt's  gusto  has  served 
him  in  such  excellent  stead  that,  despite  the  absence 
of  principles  of  taste  and  central  points,  and  the 
encroachment  of  his  intellectual  upon  his  imaginative 
faculties,  he  has  succeeded  in  making  a  permanent, 
though  a  mixed  impression.  We  know  what  his  point 
of  view  was,  and  can  flatter  ourselves  upon  our  ability, 
real  or  supposed,  to  outline  his  judgments  upon  the 
books,  pictures,  and  plays  of  to-day.  For  a  critic  to 

1  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  xxxiv. 


146  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

be  alive  eighty  years  after  publication  of  his  criti- 
cisms is  in  itself  a  feat.  Hazlitt  can  say  with  the 
Abbe,  J'ai  vecu. 

In  1819  Hazlitt  was  in  no  temper  to  put  up  with 
the  insolence  of  Gifford.  The  sale  of  the  CJiaracters  of 
Shakespear's  Plays  had  ceased  in  consequence,  as  Haz- 
litt was  perhaps  right  in  thinking,  of  Gifford' s  attack ; 
his  delightful  contributions  to  the  Round  Table  had 
been  stigmatised  by  the  same  authority  as  "  loathsome 
trash,"  "  vulgar  descriptions,"  "  silly  paradoxes,"  "  flat 
truisms,"  "misty  sophistry,"  "broken  English,"  and 
now  the  Lectures  on  the  English  Poets  were  pronounced 
"predatory  incursions  on  truth  and  common-sense." 
And  all  this  by  Gifford  !  Who  was  Gifford  ?  "It  is 
time,"  says  Hazlitt,  "  you  were  told  what  you  are,"  and 
down  he  sat  to  tell  him.  The  result  was  — 

A 
LETTER 

TO 

WILLIAM  GIFFOKD,  ESQ. 

FROM 

WILLIAM  HAZLITT,  ESQ. 


"  Fit  pugil,  et  medicum  urget " 

LONDON 

PRINTED    FOR   JOHN    MILLER   BURLINGTON   ARCADE 
PICCADILLY 


1819 

Price  Three  Shillings. 


vui.]  QUARRELS  147 

Hazlitt  was  never  more  philosophical  than  when  in 
a  passion.  He  always  gets  a  good  thought-basis  for  his 
hatreds ;  and  he  proceeded  in  this  case  to  build  up  a 
William  Gifford,  whom  he  afterwards  criticises,  with 
that  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  weak  points  of  a 
structure  only  the  builder  possesses.  This  gives  fresh- 
ness to  what  would  otherwise  be  the  dullest  of  dull 
things —  the  abuse  of  a  dead  editor  by  a  dead  author. 
Hazlitt,  again  like  Burke,  excelled  in  a  quarrel,  and 
for  the  same  reason  :  both  were  more  than  politicians, 
more  than  authors,  more  than  critics  —  they  were,  or 
once  had  been,  philosophers.  Did  any  one  quarrel,  or 
differ  with,  or  abuse,  either  Burke  or  Hazlitt,  straight- 
way that  person  became  in  the  eyes  of  both  these 
eminent  men  the  personification  of  every  evil  influence 
of  the  age,  the  abstract  and  brief  chronicle  of  infamy. 
Gifford,  a  spiteful  creature  enough,  who  had  led  a  life 
far  harder  than  Hazlitt's,  became,  like  the  Review  he 
edited,  "  a  receptacle  for  the  scum  and  sediment  of  all 
the  prejudice,  bigotry,  ill-will,  ignorance,  and  rancour 
afloat  in  the  kingdom."  Everything  that  Hazlitt  most 
hated,  dreaded,  and  despised,  Gifford,  so  Hazlitt  was 
persuaded,  loved  and  cherished,  whilst  whatever  Haz- 
litt accounted  worthy  of  all  acceptation  this  miserable 
Gifford  spat  upon  and  loathed. 

"  The  character  of  Mr.  Gifford's  mind,"  so  he  wrote  in  his 
essay  on  that  person  to  be  found  in  The  Spirit  of  the  Age, 
"  is  an  utter  want  of  independence  and  magnanimity.  He 
cannot  go  alone,  he  must  have  crutches,  a  go-cart  and  tram- 
mels, or  he  is  timid,  fretful,  and  helpless  as  a  child.  He 
cannot  conceive  of  anything  different  from  what  he  finds  it, 
and  hates  those  who  pretend  to  a  greater  reach  of  intellect 
or  boldness  of  spirit  than  himself.  He  inclines,  by  a  natural 


148  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

and  deliberate  bias,  to  the  traditional  in  laws  and  govern- 
ment ;  to  the  orthodox  in  religion ;  to  the  safe  in  opinion ; 
to  the  trite  in  imagination;  to  the  technical  in  style;  to 
whatever  implies  a  surrender  of  individual  judgment  into  the 
hands  of  authority,  and  a  subjection  of  individual  feeling  to 
mechanic  rules.  If  he  finds  any  one  flying  in  the  face  of 
these,  or  straggling  from  the  beaten  path,  he  thinks  he  has 
them  at  a  notable  disadvantage,  and  falls  foul  of  them  with- 
out loss  of  time,  partly  to  soothe  his  own  sense  of  mortified 
self-consequence,  and  as  an  edifying  spectacle  to  his  legiti- 
mate friends." 

And  again — 

"  He  may  call  out  with  the  fellow  in  the  Tempest,  I  am 
not  Stephano,  but  a  cramp.  He  would  go  back  to  the 
standard  of  opinions,  style,  the  faded  ornaments,  and  insipid 
fonnalities  that  came  into  fashion  about  forty  years  ago. 
Flashes  of  thought,  flights  of  fancy,  idiomatic  expressions,  he 
sets  down  among  the  signs  of  the  times  —  the  extraordinary 
occurrences  of  the  age  we  live  in.  They  are  marks  of  a  rest- 
less and  revolutionary  spirit ;  they  disturb  the  composure  of 
his  mind  and  threaten  the  safety  of  the  state." 

One  can  still  read  this  with  pleasure,  and  give  it 
other  names  than  Gifford's,  which  proves  how  neces- 
sary it  is,  would  you  keep  your  rage  alive  for  a  century, 
to  have  a  philosophic  basis.  If  you  cannot  do  this,  the 
wisest,  as  also  the  Christian  thing  to  do,  is  to  agree 
with  your  adversary  quickly.  A  specimen  of  the  style 
of  the  letter  must  be  given ;  and  as  it  was  not  all  phi- 
losophy, I  will  select  a  fragment  in  which  raillery 
predominates.  Gifford  in  his  criticism  of  the  Round 
Table  had  pretended  not  to  be  able  to  tell  the  differ- 
ence between  Hazlitt  and  Leigh  Hunt.  On  this, 
Hazlitt  — 


viii.]  ESSAYS  149 

"  If,  sir,  your  friend  Mr.  Hoppner,  of  whom,  as  you  tell 
us,  you  discreetly  said  nothing  while  he  was  struggling  with 
obscurity,  lest  it  should  be  imputed  to  the  partiality  of 
friendship,  but  whom  you  praised  and  dedicated  to  as  soon 
as  he  became  popular,  to  show  your  disinterestedness  and 
deference  to  public  opinion,  — if  even  this  artist,  whom  you 
celebrate  as  a  painter  of  flattering  likenesses,  had  undertaken 
to  unite  in  one  piece  the  most  striking  features  and  charac- 
teristic expression  of  his  and  your  common  friends ;  had  im- 
proved your  lurking  archness  of  look  into  Mr.  Murray's 
gentle,  downcast  obliquity  of  vision ;  had  joined  Mr.  Can- 
ning's drooping  nose  to  Mr.  Croker's  aspiring  chin,  the  clear 
complexion  (the  splendida  bilis)  of  the  one  to  the  candid 
self-complacent  aspect  of  the  other ;  had  forced  into  the  same 
preposterous  medley  the  invincible  hauteur  and  Satanic 
pride  of  Mr.  Pitt's  physiognomy,  with  the  dormant  meaning 
and  admirable  nonchalance  of  Lord  Castlereagh's  features, 
the  manly  sleekness  of  Charles  Long,  and  the  monumental 
outline  of  John  Kemble  —  what  mortal  would  have  owned 
the  likeness !  I  too,  sir,  must  claim  the  privilege  of  the 
principium  individuationis  for  myself  as  well  as  my  neigh- 
bours ;  I  will  sit  for  no  man's  picture  but  my  own,  and  not 
to  you  for  that ;  I  am  not  desirous  to  play  as  many  parts  as 
Bottom ;  and  as  to  his  ass's  head,  which  you  would  put  upon 
my  shoulders,  it  will  do  for  you  to  wear  the  next  time  you 
show  yourself  in  Mr.  Murray's  shop,  or  for  your  friend  Mr. 
Southey  to  take  with  him  whenever  he  appears  at  Court." 


In  this  spirited  passage  we  see  the  portrait-painter. 
Hazlitt  could  not  help  admiring  Castlereagh's  looks. 

The  miscellaneous  writers  of  to-day  are  sometimes 
blamed  for  their  zeal  in  collecting  their  anonymous 
contributions  to  the  papers  and  magazines,  and  making 
an  honest  book  of  them,  fit  for  the  shelves ;  but  these 
gentlemen  may,  if  they  care  to  provoke  comparisons, 
cite  the  examples  of  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  and  De  Quincey. 
Hazlitt  was  a  hardened  re-printer,  and  those  who  know 


160  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

all  his  books  get  familiar  with  passages  which  occur, 
word  for  word,  in  more  eveii  than  two  places.  He 
repeats  himself,  using  the  same  quotations,  quite 
unblushingly,  though  the  quotations  indeed  are  seldom 
word  for  word  the  same,  and  still  less  frequently  are 
they  right. 

Of  all  Hazlitt's  books,  the  one  most  open  to  the 
dread  charge  of  "  Journalism  "  is  the  Political  Essays, 
published  in  1819,  and  dedicated  in  a  manly  strain  to 
John  Hunt :  — 

"  The  tried,  steady,  zealous,  and  conscientious  advocate  of 
the  liberty  of  his  country  and  the  rights  of  mankind ;  — 

"One  of  those  few  persons  who  are  what  they  would  be 
thought  to  be ;  sincere  without  offence,  firm  but  temperate ; 
uniting  private  worth  to  public  principle ;  a  friend  in  need, 
a  patriot  without  an  eye  to  himself;  who  never  betrayed  an 
individual  or  a  cause  he  pretended  to  serve  — •  in  short,  that 
rare  character,  a  man  of  common  sense  and  common  honesty, 
"  This  volume  is  respectfully  and  gratefully 
"Inscribed  by 

"  THE  AUTHOR." 

The  preface  excited  the  admiration  of  so  good  and 
sensible  a  judge  as  the  author's  son,  who  thought  it 
the  finest  and  most  manly  exposition  of  high  political 
principle  ever  put  forth ;  and  were  the  book  nothing 
but  dedication  and  preface,  it  would  be  unexception- 
able, but  it  is  a  closely  printed  octavo,  numbering  439 
pages,  and  of  these  264  are  devoted  to  reprinting  let- 
ters to  the  newspapers,  and  articles  therein,  abusing 
Legitimacy,  the  war  with  France,  the  finances  of  Pitt, 
sham  patriotism,  Coleridge,  arid  Southey,  with  force 
and  wit,  but  after  a  furiously  unfair  and  partisan 
fashion.  The  repetitions  of  this  book  become  weari- 


viii.]  ESSAYS  161 

some;  we  are  all  by  this  time  sick  of  Wat  Tyler. 
Southey  (the  more's  the  pity)  has  written  himself 
down,  and  there's  an  end  of  it. 

The  rest  of  the  book  is  made  up  by  again  reprinting 
"  The  Character  of  Pitt,"  and  taking  the  characters  of 
Chatham,  Fox,  and  Burke  from  The  Eloquence  of  the 
British  Senate,  and  adding  to  these  ten  articles  from 
Leigh  Hunt's  short-lived  Yellow  Dwarf. 

This  publication  did  not  turn  away  the  wrath  of 
"  William  Gifford,  Esq.,"  who,  recognising,  I  suppose, 
the  value  of  a  philosophic  basis,  now  denounced  Haz- 
litt  in  the  Quarterly  as  "  the  slanderer  of  the  human 
race." 

With  this  epithet  hurled  at,  but  hardly  sticking  to 
him,  I  must  approach  some  personal  incidents  in 
Hazlitt's  life. 

It  will  not  have  escaped  notice  how  completely  we 
have  lost  sight  (save  in  the  eloquent  outburst  reprinted 
from  the  Yellow  Dwarf  at  the  end  of  the  Political 
Essays)  of  the  elder  Hazlitt.  What,  too,  has  become 
of  the  mother  whose  birthplace  in  the  far  Fen  country 
her  sentimental  son  had  visited  on  foot,  and  of  Peggy 
the  affectionate  diarist.  Hazlitt  was  once  glad  enough 
of  the  shelter  of  his  father's  house  in  Wem.  He  was 
a  very  bad  correspondent,  says  his  grandson,  who  con- 
ceives it  to  be  possible  that  since  he  moved  from 
home,  he  never  traced  a  line  to  his  father,  mother,  or 
sister.  "He  never  held,"  proceeds  his  biographer, 
"any  epistolary  communication  he  could  avoid  with 
his  wife,  son,  or  publishers,  and  friends  of  thirty 
years'  standing  had  not  a  scrap  of  his  handwriting. 
It  was  an  idiosyncrasy."  It  was  also  a  great  pity,  so 
far  at  least  as  his  father,  mother,  and  sister  were  thus 


162  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

neglected.  With  his  wives  and  publishers  I  am  not 
concerned. 

Those  who  have  to  earn  their  livings  by  daily  writ- 
ing for  the  press  may  be  excused  if  they  are  bad 
correspondents.  Carlyles  are  rare,  and,  besides,  Car- 
lyle  was  never  a  journalist.  The  fact  that  Hazlitt 
found  it  easier  to  write  splendid  disquisitions  about 
the  essential  grandeur  of  his  father's  character  for 
money,  than  to  drop  the  old  man  an  occasional  line 
of  greeting  for  love,  is  regrettable,  but  quite  consistent 
with  the  genuineness  of  his  filial  pride.  A  senti- 
mentalist is  usually  better  qualified  to  force  you  to 
honour  his  father  and  his  mother  than  he  is  to  keep 
the  fifth  commandment  himself. 

The  elder  Hazlitt  had  left  Wem  in  1814 ;  and,  after 
one  or  two  changes,  had  settled  down  in  retirement  at 
Crediton,  in  an  old  house  called  Wins  wood,  rental 
£24  a  year.  Here  he  died  on  the  16th  of  July  1820 
in  his  eighty-fourth  year,  ministered  to  by  his  wife 
and  daughter.  His  eloquent  son  was  not  by  his 
father's  side,  nor  was  his  address  known  at  Wins- 
wood  at  the  time.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  at 
Winterslow  Hutt. 

It  was  the  duty  of  the  diarist  to  tell  her  brother  of 
their  father's  death.  She  did  so  as  follows :  — 

"  DEAR  WILLIAM,  —  If  we  had  known  where  to  direct  to 
you,  we  should  not  have  sent  Mary l  to  tell  you  of  our  father's 
death,  but  would  have  written  to  you  directly ;  but  neither 
your  mother  nor  I  were  well  enough  to  write  at  the  time, 
and  we  thought  Sarah  might  be  on  the  road,  and  have  been 
expecting  her  every  night  since.  Your  father's  death  was 
unexpected  at  last;  for  though  we  had  been  at  one  time 

1  John  Hazlitt's  second  daughter. 


Tin.]  ESSAYS  163 

doubtful  of  his  living  through  the  week,  Mr.  Nosworthy 
thought  him  much  better  on  Saturday  morning.  He  died 
on  Sunday  the  16th,  about  seven  in  the  morning.  To  him 
his  death  was  a  release  from  a  state  of  suffering ;  he  made 
no  complaint,  nor  did  he  give  one  groan,  but  went  on  talk- 
ing of  glory,  honour,  and  immortality,  and  talking  with  me 
to  the  last.  His  senses  returned  the  last  few  hours ;  and 
when  he  could  not  speak,  he  took  my  hand  and  put  it  into 
mother's.  He  kept  his  bed  but  one  day,  and  his  appetite 
was  very  good ;  but  he  had  water  on  his  chest,  and  that  we 
did  not  know  for  a  long  time,  and  we  thought  he  might 
have  lived  many  months  longer.  My  mother  is  very  weak 
and  ill ;  it  will  be  a  long  time  before  she  recovers  the  dis- 
tress and  fatigue  she  has  gone  through.  I  am  afraid  I  have 
not  written  very  clearly,  as  my  head  is  so  confused  for  want 
of  sleep.  The  habit  of  watching  for  so  long  a  time  prevents 
my  sleeping  now.  I  hope  I  shall  get  better  soon,  and  be 
able  to  eat  more  than  I  do  at  present. 

"  My  mother  wishes  to  know  if  you  intend  to  write  any- 
thing in  the  Repository,  giving  some  account  of  your  father  ? 
If  you  don't,  somebody  else  will,  and  you  can  do  it  best. 
Mr.  Hinton  was  asking  about  it,  and  wished  to  know  if  he 
could  do  anything  for  us  in  any  way.  The  people  here  have 
been  very  kind  in  doing  and  ordering  everything  for  us  that 
we  could  not  see  about  ourselves.  Sarah  intended  to  write 
some  in  this  letter,  but  she  will  not  be  back  time  enough. 
We  wish  her  to  stay  a  week  or  two  with  us,  now  she  is  here. 
We  have  got  a  bed  to  spare  for  you  now  whenever  you  like  to 
come.  I  hope  you  will  write  to  us  soon;  my  mother  wishes 
to  hear  from  you,  and  know  how  you  are.  We  all  unite  in 
love  to  you.  I  have  no  more  to  say,  but  farewell,  and  may 
God  bless  you.  —  I  am  your  affectionate  sister, 

"  P.  HAZLITT. 

"Crediton,  July  28th  (1820). 

"  (Endorsed)  W.  HAZLITT,  Esq., 

"  At  the  Hut,  Winterslow,  near  Salisbury." 

Hazlitt  did  not  write  the  account  for  The  Repository. 
Mr.  Hinton,  who  was  a  Unitarian  divine,  wrote  it, 


154  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

probably  in  a  style  more  in  unison  with  the  general 
tone  of  the  obituary  notices  published  in  that  paper 
than  anything  from  Hazlitt's  pen  would  have  proved. 

We  are  told  in  the  Life  that  in  the  manuscript  of 
the  essay  "  On  the  Fear  of  Death,"  which  appeared  in 
the  second  volume  of  Table-Talk  (1822),  there  is  the 
following  paraphrase  of  Miss  Hazlitt's  account  of  her 
father's  death,  which  does  not  appear  in  the  printed 
version :  "  I  did  not  see  my  father  after  he  was  dead, 
but  I  saw  death  shake  him  by  the  palsied  hand  and 
stare  him  in  the  face.  He  made  as  good  an  end  as 
Falstaff,  though  different,  as  became  him.  After 
repeating  the  name  of  his  Redeemer  often,  he  took  my 
mother's  hand,  and  looking  up,  placed  it  in  my  sister's, 
and  expired.  There  was  something  graceful  and 
gracious  in  his  nature,  which  showed  itself  in  his 
last  act." 

Hazlitt  did  well  to  strike  this  passage  out.  It  is  no 
improvement  on  the  original. 

Hazlitt  was  not,  as  we  have  already  seen,  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  new  school  of  poetry,  whether  illus- 
trated by  the  intense  self -consciousness  of  Wordsworth 
or  the  mystical  fanaticism  of  Shelley.  He  was  hard 
to  please  ;  and  in  an  essay  on  "Paradox  and  Common- 
place," which  first  appeared  in  the  first  volume  of 
Table-Talk  (1821),  he  proceeded  to  philosophise  about 
the  author  of  Prometheus  Unbound  in  the  following 
strain :  • — 

"The  author  of  the  Prometheus  Unbound  (to  take  an 
individual  instance  of  the  last  character)  has  a  fire  in  his 
eye,  a  fever  in  his  blood,  a  maggot  in  his  brain,  a  hectic 
flutter  in  his  speech,  which  mark  out  the  philosophic  fanatic. 
He  is  sanguine-complexioned  and  shrill-voiced.  As  is  often 


vni.]  ESSAYS  155 

observable  in  the  case  of  religious  enthusiasts,  there  is  a 
slenderness  of  constitutional  stamina,  which  renders  the 
flesh  no  match  for  the  spirit.  His  bending,  flexible  form 
appears  to  take  no  strong  hold  of  things,  does  not  grapple 
with  the  world  about  him,  but  slides  from  it  like  a  river  — 

'  And  in  its  liquid  texture  mortal  wound 
Receives  no  more  than  can  the  fluid  air.' 

The  shock  of  accident,  the  weight  of  authority,  make  no 
impression  on  his  opinions,  which  retire  like  a  feather,  or 
rise  from  the  encounter  unhurt,  through  their  own  buoyancy. 
He  is  clogged  by  no  dull  system  of  realities,  no  earth-bound 
feelings,  no  rooted  prejudices,  by  nothing  that  belongs  to  the 
mighty  trunk  and  hard  husk  of  nature  and  habit,  but  is 
drawn  up  by  irresistible  levity  to  the  regions  of  mere  specu- 
lation and  fancy,  to  the  sphere  of  air  and  fire,  where  his 
delighted  spirit  floats  in  '  seas  of  pearl  and  clouds  of  amber.' 
There  is  no  caput  mortuum  of  wornout,  threadbare  experi- 
ence to  serve  as  ballast  to  his  mind ;  it  is  all  volatile  intel- 
lectual salt  of  tartar,  that  refuses  to  combine  its  evanescent, 
inflammable  essence  with  anything  solid  or  anything  lasting. 
Bubbles  are  to  him  the  only  realities  —  touch  them,  and 
they  vanish.  Curiosity  is  the  only  proper  category  of  his 
mind;  and  though  a  man  in  knowledge,  he  is  a  child  in 
feeling.  Hence  he  puts  everything  into  a  metaphysical 
crucible  to  judge  of  it  himself  and  exhibit  it  to  others  as 
a  subject  of  interesting  experiment,  without  first  making 
it  over  to  the  ordeal  of  his  common-sense  or  trying  it  on  his 
heart.  This  faculty  of  speculating  at  random  on  all  ques- 
tions may,  in  its  overgrown  and  uninformed  state,  do  much 
mischief  without  intending  it,  like  an  overgrown  child  with 
the  power  of  a  man.  Mr.  Shelley  has  been  accused  of 
vanity  —  I  think  he  is  chargeable  with  extreme  levity,  but 
this  levity  is  so  great  that  I  do  not  believe  he  is  sensible  of 
its  consequences.  He  strives  to  overturn  all  established 
creeds  and  systems ;  but  this  is  in  him  an  effect  of  constitu- 
tion. He  runs  before  the  most  extravagant  opinions,  but 
this  is  because  he  is  held  back  by  none  of  the  merely  me- 


156  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

chanical  checks  of  sympathy  and  habit.  He  tampers  with 
all  sorts  of  obnoxious  subjects,  but  it  is  less  because  he  is 
gratified  with  the  rankness  of  the  taint  than  captivated  with 
the  intellectual  phosphoric  light  they  emit.  It  would  seem 
that  he  wished  not  so  much  to  convince  or  inform  as  to  shock 
the  public  by  the  tenor  of  his  productions,  but  I  suspect  he 
is  more  intent  upon  startling  himself  with  his  electrical 
experiments  in  morals  and  philosophy;  and  though  they 
may  scorch  other  people,  they  are  to  him  harmless  amuse- 
ments, the  coruscations  of  an  aurora  borealis,  that  'play 
round  the  head,  but  do  not  reach  the  heart.'  Still  I  could 
wish  that  he  would  put  a  stop  to  the  incessant,  alarming 
whirl  of  his  voltaic  battery.  With  his  zeal,  his  talent,  and 
his  fancy,  he  would  do  more  good  and  less  harm,  if  he  were 
to  give  up  his  wilder  theories,  and  if  he  took  less  pleasure  in 
feeling  his  heart  flutter  in  unison  with  the  panicstruck 
apprehensions  of  his  readers." 

This  sermon  greatly  put  out  Leigh  Hunt,  who  was 
for  ever  fluttering  in  butterfly  fashion  round  some 
flower  of  the  forest,  and  he  wrote  some  angry  letters 
to  Hazlitt  protesting  against  the  "  cutting  up  "  of  a 
brother  reformer.  Hazlitt's  reply  is  printed  for  the 
first  time  in  the  Memoirs;  and  being,  as  it  is,  full  of 
character,  must  be  given  at  length  :  — 

"Saturday  night  (April  21,  1821). 

"MY  DEAR  HUNT,  —  I  have  no  quarrel  with  you,  nor  can 
I  have.  You  are  one  of  those  people  that  I  like,  do  what 
they  will ;  there  are  others  that  I  do  not  like,  do  what  they 
may.  I  have  always  spoken  well  of  you  to  friend  or  foe,  viz. 
I  have  said  you  were  one  of  the  pleasantest  and  cleverest 
persons  I  ever  knew,  but  that  you  teased  any  one  you  had  to 
deal  with  out  of  their  lives.  I  am  fond  of  a  theory,  as  you 
know ;  but  I  will  give  up  even  that  to  a  friend  if  he  shows 
that  he  has  any  regard  to  my  personal  feelings.  You  provoke 
me  to  think  hard  things  of  you,  and  then  you  wonder  that  I 


viii.]  ESSAYS  167 

hitch  them  into  an  essay,  as  if  that  made  any  difference.  I 
pique  myself  on  doing  what  I  can  for  others ;  but  I  cannot  say 
that  I  have  found  any  suitable  returns  for  this,  and  hence  per- 
haps my  outrageousness  of  stomach  !  For  instance,  I  praised 
you  in  the  Edinburgh  Review;  and  when  in  a  case  of  life  and 
death  I  tried  to  lecture,  you  refused  to  go  near  the  place,  and 
gave  this  as  a  reason,  saying  it  would  seem  a  collusion  if  you 
said  anything  in  my  favour  after  what  I  had  said  of  you.  2.  I 
got  Reynolds  to  write  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  at  a  time 
when  I  had  a  great  reluctance  to  ask  any  favour  of  Jeffrey, 
and  from  that  time  I  never  set  eyes  on  him  for  a  year  and  a 
half  after.  3.  I  wrote  a  book  in  defence  of  Godwin  some  years 
ago,  one-half  of  which  he  has  since  stolen  without  acknowledg- 
ment, without  even  mentioning  my  name,  and  yet  he  comes 
to  me  to  review  the  very  work,  and  I  write  to  Jeffrey  to  ask 
his  consent,  thinking  myself,  which  you  do  not,  the  most  mag- 
nanimous person  in  the  world  in  the  defence  of  a  cause.  4.  I 
have  taken  all  opportunities  of  praising  Lamb,  and  I  never 
got  a  good  word  from  him  in  return,  big  or  little,  till  the  other 
day.  He  seemed  struck  all  of  a  heap  if  I  ever  hinted  at  the 
possibility  of  his  giving  me  a  lift  at  any  time.  5.  It  was  but 
the  other  day  that  two  friends  did  all  they  could  to  intercept 
an  article  about  me  from  appearing  in  the  E.  R.,  saying  '  it 
would  be  too  late,'  '  that  the  editor  had  been  sounded  at  a 
distance,  and  was  averse,'  with  twenty  other  excuses ;  and  at 
last  I  was  obliged  to  send  it  myself,  graciously  and  by  main 
force,  as  it  were,  when  it  appeared  just  in  time  to  save  me 
from  drowning.  Coulson  had  been  backwards  and  forwards 
between  my  house  and  Bentham's  for  between  three  or  four 
years;  and  when  the  latter  philosophically  put  an  execution  in 
my  house,  the  plea  was  that  he  had  never  heard  of  my  name ; 
and  when  I  theorised  on  this  the  other  day  as  bad  policy,  and 
felo  de  se  on  the  part  of  the  Radicals,  your  nephew  J  and  that 
set  said,  '  Oh,  it  was  an  understood  thing  —  the  execution, 
you  know  ! '  My  God,  it  is  enough  to  drive  one  mad.  I  have 
not  a  soul  to  stand  by  me,  and  yet  I  am  to  give  up  my  only 
resource  and  revenge,  a  theory  —  I  won't  do  it,  that's  flat. 

1  Mr.  Henry  Leigh  Hunt,  of  the  firm  of  Hunt  and  Clarke. 


158  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Montagu 1  is,  I  fancy,  cut  at  my  putting  him  among  people 
with  one  idea,  and  yet  when  the  Blackwoods  (together  with 
your)  shirking  out  of  that  business  put  me  nearly  under- 
ground, he  took  every  opportunity  to  discourage  me ;  and  one 
evening,  when  I  talked  of  going  there,  I  was  given  to  under- 
stand that  there  was  '  a  party  expected.'  Yet  after  this  I  am 
not  to  look  at  him  a  little  in  abstracto.  This  is  what  has 
soured  me,  and  made  me  sick  of  friendship  and  acquaintance- 
ship. When  did  I  speak  ill  of  your  brother  John  ?  He  never 
played  me  any  tricks.  I  was  in  a  cursed  ill  humour  with  you 
for  two  or  three  things  when  I  wrote  the  article  you  find  fault 
with  (I  grant  not  without  reason).  If  I  had  complained  to 
you,  you  would  only  have  laughed ;  you  would  have  played 
me  the  very  same  tricks  the  very  next  time ;  you  would  not 
have  cared  one  farthing  about  annoying  me ;  and  yet  you  com- 
plain that  I  draw  a  logical  conclusion  from  all  this,  and  pub- 
lish it  to  the  world  without  your  name.  As  to  Shelley,  I  do 
not  hold  myself  responsible  to  him.  You  say  I  want  imagi- 
nation. If  you  mean  invention  or  fancy,  I  say  so  too ;  but 
if  you  mean  a  disposition  to  sympathise  with  the  claims  or 
merits  of  others,  I  deny  it.  I  have  been  too  much  disposed 
to  waive  my  own  pretensions  in  deference  to  those  of  others. 
I  am  tired  with  playing  at  rackets  all  day,  and  you  will  be 
tired  with  this  epistle.  It  has  little  to  do  with  you  ;  for  I 
see  no  use  in  raising  up  a  parcel  of  small,  old  grievances. 
But  I  think  the  general  ground  of  defence  is  good. 

"W.  H. 

"  I  have  given  Hogg's  papers  to  Baldwin,  and  wish  you 
would  write  a  character  of  me  for  the  next  number.  I  want 
to  know  why  everybody  has  such  a  dislike  to  me." 


Hazlitt  may  have  been  unreasonable  in  finding  fault 
with  Lamb,  whose  opportunities  of  praising  Hazlitt 
cannot  have  been  many,  but  what  he  says  as  to  his 
own  conduct  in  praising  Lamb  whenever  he  got  a 

1  Mr.  Basil  Montagu. 


vni.]  ESSAYS  169 

chance  is  only  the  truth.  But  when  Southey  thought 
fit  to  reproach  Lamb  in  public  for  his  friendship  (then, 
as  it  happened,  suspended)  with  Hazlitt,  nobly  indeed 
did  Elia  take  the  field  and  rout  the  foe. 

Hazlitt's  "  I  want  to  know  why  everybody  has  such  a 
dislike  to  me  "  is  pathetic.  He  could  not  understand  it. 

The  reference  to  "  playing  rackets  all  day  "  justifies 
a  word  or  two  about  Hazlitt's  fondness  for  the  game, 
which  he  played  with  a  fierce  eagerness,  sometimes 
lying  awake  a  whole  night  trying  to  score  out  the  last 
ball  of  an  interesting  game  in  a  particular  corner  of  the 
court  which  he  had  missed  from  nervousness.  He 
philosophises  even  about  rackets,  remarking  that 
though  it  is  very  like  any  other  game,  very  much  a 
thing  of  skill  and  practice,  it  is  also  a  thing  of  opinion, 
"  subject  to  all  the  skiey  influences."  "  If  you  think 
you  can  win,  you  can  win.  Faith  is  necessary  for 
victory,"  and  so  on  down  half  a  page.1 

He  was  also  very  fond  of  fives,  both  of  playing  and 
seeing  it  played.  His  short  life  of  John  Cavanagh  is 
one  of  Hazlitt's  finest  performances.  One  could  wish 
that  Boxiana  was  in  the  least  like  it,  and  that  Hazlitt 
had  written  the  History  of  Fisticuffs  instead  of  a  Life 
of  Napoleon. 

"  Died  at  his  house  in  Burbage  Street,  St.  Giles's,  John 
Cavanagh,  the  famous  hand  fives-player.  When  a  person 
dies  who  does  any  one  thing  better  than  any  one  else  in  the 
world,  which  so  many  others  are  trying  to  do  well,  it  leaves  a 
gap  in  society.  It  is  not  likely  that  any  one  will  now  see  the 
game  of  fives  played  in  its  perfection  for  many  years  to  come, 

1  Haydon  once  met  Hazlitt  returning  from  the  Fives-court  with 
his  shirt  in  his  pocket.  He  had  heen  playing  rackets  with  such 
energy  that  his  shirt  was  like  a  wet  rag.  — Hazlitt  Memoirs,  ii.  35. 


160  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

for  Cavanagh  is  dead,  and  has  not  left  his  peer  behind  him. 
It  may  be  said  that  there  are  things  of  more  importance  than 
striking  a  ball  against  a  wall.  There  are  things  indeed  which 
make  more  noise  and  do  as  little  good,  such  as  making  war 
and  peace,  making  speeches  and  answering  them,  making 
verses  and  blotting  them,  making  money  and  throwing  it 
away.  But  the  game  of  fives  is  what  no  one  despises  who  has 
ever  played  at  it.  ...  As  it  was  said  of  a  great  orator  that 
he  never  was  at  a  loss  for  a  word,  and  for  the  properest  word, 
so  Cavanagh  always  could  tell  the  degree  of  force  necessary 
to  be  given  to  a  ball,  and  the  precise  direction  in  which  it 
should  be  sent.  He  did  his  work  with  the  greatest  ease ; 
never  took  more  pains  than  was  necessary ;  and  while  others 
were  fagging  themselves  to  death,  was  as  cool  and  collected  as 
if  he  had  just  entered  the  court.  His  style  of  play  was  as 
remarkable  as  his  power  of  execution.  He  had  no  affectation, 
no  trifling.  He  did  not  throw  away  the  game  to  show  off  an 
attitude  or  try  an  experiment.  He  was  a  fine,  sensible, 
manly  player,  who  did  what  he  could,  but  that  was  more  than 
any  one  else  could  even  affect  to  do.  His  blows  were  not 
undecided  and  ineffectual,  lumbering  like  Mr.  Wordsworth's 
epic  poetry,  nor  wavering  like  Mr.  Coleridge's  lyric  prose,  nor 
short  of  the  mark  like  Mr.  Brougham's  speeches,  nor  wide  of 
it  like  Mr.  Canning's  wit,  nor  foul  like  the  Quarterly,  not  let 
balls  like  the  Edinburgh  Review.  Cobbett  and  Junius  to- 
gether would  have  made  a  Cavanagh.  He  was  the  best  up- 
hill player  in  the  world ;  even  when  his  adversary  was 
fourteen,  he  would  play  on  the  same  or  better ;  and  as  he 
never  flung  away  the  game  through  carelessness  and  conceit, 
he  never  gave  it  up  through  laziness  or  want  of  heart.  The 
only  peculiarity  of  his  play  was  that  he  never  volleyed,  but  let 
the  balls  hop ;  but  if  they  rose  an  inch  from  the  ground,  he 
never  missed  having  them.  There  was  not  only  nobody  equal, 
but  nobody  second  to  him.  It  is  supposed  that  he  could  give 
any  other  player  half  the  game,  or  beat  him  with  his  left 
hand.  His  service  was  tremendous.  He  once  played  Wood- 
ward and  Meredith  together  (two  of  the  best  players  in 
England)  in  the  Fives-court,  St.  Martin's  Street,  and  made 
seven-and-twenty  aces  following  by  services  alone  —  a  thing 


viii.]  ESSAYS  161 

unheard  of.  He  another  time  played  Peru,  who  was  con- 
sidered a  first-rate  fives-player,  a  match  of  the  best  out  of 
five  games ;  and  in  the  three  first  games,  which  of  course  decided 
the  match,  Peru  got  only  one  ace.  Cavanagh  was  an  Irishman 
by  birth,  and  a  house-painter  by  profession.  ...  He  used 
frequently  to  play  matches  at  Copenhagen  House  for  wagers 
and  dinners.  The  wall  against  which  they  play  is  the  same 
that  supports  the  kitchen  chimney ;  and  when  the  wall 
resounded  louder  than  usual,  the  cooks  exclaimed,  '  Those  are 
the  Irishman's  balls,'  and  the  joints  trembled  on  the  spit ! 
Goldsmith  consoled  himself  that  there  were  places  where  he  too 
was  admired ;  and  Cavanagh  was  the  admiration  of  all  the 
fives-courts  where  he  ever  played.  .  .  .  Mr.  Powell,  when 
he  played  matches  in  the  Court  in  St.  Martin's  Street,  used 
to  fill  his  gallery  at  half-a-crown  a  head  with  amateurs  and 
admirers  of  talent  in  whatever  department  it  is  shown.  He 
could  not  have  shown  himself  in  any  ground  in  England  but 
he  would  have  been  immediately  surrounded  with  inquisitive 
gazers,  trying  to  find  out  in  what  part  of  his  frame  his  un- 
rivalled skill  lay,  as  politicians  wonder  to  see  the  balance  of 
Europe  suspended  in  Lord  Castlereagh's  face,  and  admire  the 
trophies  of  the  British  Navy  lurking  under  Mr.  Croker's 
hanging  brow.  Now  Cavanagh  was  as  good  looking  a  man  as 
the  Noble  Lord,  and  much  better  looking  than  the  Right 
Hon.  Secretary.  He  had  a  clear,  open  countenance,  and  did 
not  look  sideways  or  down.  He  was  a  young  fellow  of  sense, 
humour,  and  courage.  He  once  had  a  quarrel  with  a  water- 
man at  Hungerford  stairs,  and,  they  say,  served  him  out  in 
great  style.  In  a  word,  there  are  hundreds  at  this  day  who 
cannot  mention  his  name  without  admiration  as  the  best 
fives-player  that  perhaps  ever  lived  (the  greatest  excellence  of 
which  they  have  any  notion),  and  the  noisy  shout  of  the  ring 
happily  stood  him  in  stead  of  the  unheard  voice  of  posterity  ! 
The  only  person  who  seems  to  have  excelled  as  much  in  an- 
other way  as  Cavanagh  did  in  his  was  the  late  John  Davies, 
the  racket-player.  It  was  remarked  of  him  that  he  did  not 
seem  to  follow  the  ball,  but  the  ball  seemed  to  follow  him. 
Give  him  a  foot  of  wall,  and  he  was  sure  to  make  the  ball. 
The  four  best  racket-players  of  that  day  were  Jack  Spines, 


162  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Jem  Harding,  Armitage,  and  Church.  Davies  could  give  any 
one  of  these  two  hands  a  time,  that  is,  half  the  game,  and  each 
of  these,  at  their  best,  could  give  the  best  player  now  in 
London  the  same  odds.  Such  are  the  gradations  in  all  exer- 
tions of  human  skill  and  art.  He  once  played  four  capital 
players  together  and  beat  them.  He  was  also  a  first-rate 
tennis-player,  and  an  excellent  fives-player.  In  the  Fleet  or 
King's  Bench  he  would  have  stood  against  Powell,  who  was 
reckoned  the  best  open-ground  player  of  his  time.  This  last- 
mentioned  player  is  at  present  the  keeper  of  the  Fives-court, 
and  we  might  recommend  to  him  for  a  motto  over  his  door, 
'Who  enters  here,  forgets  himself,  his  country,  and  his 
friends.'  And  the  best  of  it  is,  that  by  the  calculation  of  the 
odds,  none  of  the  three  are  worth  remembering !  Cavanagh 
died  from  the  bursting  of  a  blood-vessel,  which  prevented  him 
from  playing  for  the  last  two  or  three  years.  This,  he  was 
often  heard  to  say,  he  thought  hard  upon  him.  He  was  fast 
recovering,  however,  when  he  was  suddenly  carried  off,  to  the 
regret  of  all  who  knew  him.  As  Mr.  Peel  made  it  a  qualifica- 
tion of  the  present  Speaker,  Mr.  Manners  Sutton,  that  he  was 
an  excellent  moral  character,  so  Jack  Cavanagh  was  a  zealous 
Catholic,  and  could  not  be  persuaded  to  eat  meat  on  a  Friday, 
the  day  on  which  he  died.  We  have  paid  this  willing  tribute 
to  his  memory  — 

'  Let  no  rude  hand  deface  it, 
And  his  forlorn  Hie  Jacet.'  " l 

If  any  reader  thinks  this  too  long  a  quotation  about 
a  fives-player,  I  will  silence  him  with  another,  a  very 
short  one,  from  the  essay  On  the  Ignorance  of  the 
Learned  — 

"  It  is  better  to  be  able  neither  to  read  nor  write  than  to 
be  able  to  do  nothing  else." 

The  famous  "  Fight "  appeared  in  1822  in  the  New 
Monthly  Magazine.  From  it  I  will  not  quote.  As 

i '  The  Indian  Jugglers.'  —  Table-Talk. 


viii.]  ESSAYS  163 

Oxford  was  once  declared  to  be,  by  an  enthusiast, 
after  dinner,  "  it  is  a  perfect  whole,"  and  must  not  be 
curtailed,  as  I  was  compelled  to  curtail  Cavanagh.  It 
is  full  of  poetry,  life,  and  motion ;  Shakespeare,  Ho- 
garth, and  Nature.  The  description  of  the  actual 
fight  is  not  long,  which  perhaps  is  as  well,  for  it  is 
vivid.  A  phrase  Tennyson  has  made  famous  occurs 
in  it,  for  Hazlitt  speaks  of  Bill  Neate  making  "  red 
ruin  "  of  Tom  Hickman's  cheek. 

Table-Talk  has  already  been  mentioned  more  than 
once ;  but  it  should  be  here  formally  recorded  that  it 
was  another  collection  of  miscellaneous  essays,  only  a 
few  of  which  (less  than  half  a  dozen)  had  been  printed 
before.  Mr.  Henry  Colburn,  a  pushing,  advertising 
publisher,  alleged  to  have  royal  blood  in  his  veins, 
brought  it  out  in  two  volumes  (1821  and  1822). 

These  two  volumes  standing  alone  contain  enough 
to  establish  Hazlitt's  reputation  as  one  of  the  greatest 
miscellaneous  writers  that  ever  lived.  The  very  titles 
of  the  papers  make  you  a-hungered  to  read  them.  The 
essays  "  On  Going  a  Journey,"  "  On  the  Fear  of 
Death,"  "  On  Patronage  and  Puffing,"  "  The  Indian 
Jugglers,"  "  On  a  Landscape  by  Nicolas  Poussin,"  are 
compositions  of  which  no  sensible  man,  who  happens 
to  be  fond  of  reading  (and  many  sensible  men  are  not), 
can  ever  grow  tired.  Of  the  miscellaneous  writer  one 
does  not  demand  settled  principles  of  taste  or  deep 
searching  criticism  ;  it  is  enough  if  he  at  once  arrests, 
and  throughout  maintains  our  attention  ;  if  he  hurries 
our  sluggish  spirit  up  and  down  animated  pages  ;  if  he 
is  never  vapid,  or  humdrum,  or  foolish,  or  blatant,  or 
self-satisfied ;  if  he  forces  us  to  forget  ourselves ;  and 
by  renewing  our  delight  in  books,  poetry,  plays, 


164  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

pictures,  and  in  the  humours  and  emotions  of  life, 
makes  us  feel  that  it  was  really  worth  our  while  not 
only  to  have  learned  to  read,  but  to  have  gone  on  read- 
ing ever  since. 

Gifford  was  content  on  the  appearance  of  Table-Talk 
to  add  to  the  title  of  "  Slanderer  of  the  Human  Race  " 
that  of  "  Slang  Whanger,"  meaning  thereby,  he  was 
good  enough  to  explain,  "a  gabbler  who  employs 
slang  to  amuse  the  rabble."  But  any  deficiency  of 
abuse  noticeable  in  the  style  of  the  Quarterly  was 
amply  atoned  for  by  Professor  Wilson's  merry  men  in 
Blackwood,  who  declared  that  the  Table-Talker  was 
not  a  man,  but  an  ulcer ;  that  his  two  volumes  were 
one  gaping  sore  of  wounded  feeling  and  vanity ;  nor 
were  they  content  with  a  single  reference  to  Hazlitt, 
who  henceforth  became  one  of  the  favourite  marks  of 
their  goat-footed  merriment. 

Hazlitt,  if  Mr.  Patmore  is  to  be  believed,  was  driven 
almost  mad  by  these  Yahoos  ;  and  it  may  be  that  the 
irregularities  and  coarse  excesses  of  this  period  of  his 
life  may  be  in  part  attributed  to  an  unhinging  of  the 
mind  occasioned  by  repeated  personal  abuse.  It  is  a 
pity  Hazlitt  was  not  a  fighting  man ;  he  might  then 
have  called  Christopher  North  out ;  and  if  he  had  by 
chance  deposited  several  large  slugs  in  the  Professor's 
acromion  process,  "thereby  endangering  his  life  and 
lacerating  the  clavicle  of  his  right  shoulder,"  only 
good  would  have  been  done.  He  did  threaten  legal 
proceedings  with  one  good  result  —  Mr.  John  Murray 
refused  any  longer  to  act  for  "  Maga  "  in  London. 

The  establishment  in  1820  of  the  London  Magazine, 
sometimes  called  Baldwin's,  and  sometimes  Taylor's 
Magazine,  should  be  mentioned  in  a  Life  of  Hazlitt, 


viii.]  ESSAYS  165 

who  for  a  few  years  contributed  to  it  both  dramatic 
and  fine  art  criticisms,  as  well  as  numerous  miscella- 
neous essays,  which  were  all  afterwards  reprinted  in 
the  Plain  Speaker  (1826)  or  elsewhere,  with  one 
notable  exception  —  an  article  in  the  October  number 
for  1820  on  the  "  Present  State  of  Parliamentary  Elo- 
quence." 

In  this  essay  Hazlitt  passes  in  review  Mackintosh, 
Brougham,  Whitbread,  Tierney,  Ponsonby,  Plunkett, 
Castlereagh,  Wilberforce,  Canning,  and  other  speakers 
in  an  admirable  and  for  the  most  part  convincing 
fashion,  though  I  find  it  hard  to  bear  the  references 
to  Sir  Samuel  Romilly.  "  I  did  not  much  like  Korn- 
illy's  significant  oracular  way  of  laying  down  the  law 
in  the  House,  his  self-important  assumptions  of  second- 
hand truths,  and  his  impatience  of  contradiction,  as  if 
he  gave  his  time  there  for  nothing."  How  well  do  I 
know  the  style !  but  that  it  should  be  Romilly's  !  I 
cannot,  I  must  not,  believe  it. 

The  early  numbers  of  the  London  Magazine  contain 
as  their  proud  possessions  the  first  essays  of  "  Elia." 
"  The  South  Sea  House  "  is  in  the  August  number  for 
1820,  "  Oxford  in  the  Vacation  "  follows  in  October, 
and  "  Christ's  Hospital  Five  and  Thirty  Years  Ago  " 
is  in  the  November  number,  which  also  contained  a 
savage  onslaught  upon  BlacJcwood,  to  be  succeeded  in 
the  December  number  by  an  even  more  furious  attack 
upon  the  same  shameless  offender.  These  BlacJcwood 
articles  impart  a  melancholy  to  the  early  volumes  of 
the  London  Magazine  which  even  "  Elia  "  cannot  dis- 
pel ;  for  they  still  seem  red  with  the  blood  of  John 
Scott,  the  first  editor,  who  was,  so  it  is  believed,  the 
writer  of  the  articles  in  question. 


166  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Whether  John  Scott  iu  abusing  Blackwood  as  he  did 
in  his  new  magazine  was  chiefly  animated  by  holy 
wrath,  and  a  desire  to  avenge  the  undoubted  wrongs 
of  Hazlitt  and  Leigh  Hunt,  and  of  a  greater  than 
either,  or  by  that  first  and  last  infirmity  of  the  jour- 
nalist's mind,  to  attract  attention  to  his  new  venture, 
cannot  be  told.  Mr.  Lockhart,  whose  name  was  freely 
mentioned  in  the  December  article,  considered  him- 
self aggrieved,  bade  farewell  to  his  young  wife  about 
to  lie  in  of  her  first  child  —  Hugh  Little  John,  known 
to  us  all  —  and  came  to  London  to  demand  and  receive 
satisfaction,  which  Scott  would  not  give  unless  Lock- 
hart  first  repudiated  any  connection,  either  as  editor, 
or  financially,  with  the  management  of  Blackwood. 
Lockhart,  who  acted  throughout  under  the  advice  of 
his  old  Balliol  friend  Mr.  J.  H.  Christie,  a  man  of 
the  nicest  honour,  who  viewed  with  no  little  disap- 
proval Lockhart's  unhappy  connection  with  the  Edin- 
burgh press,  refused  to  give  Scott  more  than  an 
assurance  that  he  was  not  editor  of  Blacktuood.  There 
was  therefore  a  deadlock;  but  honour  being  a  nice 
matter  resting  in  report,  both  Lockhart  and  Scott 
took  to  printing  "  Statements  "  for  circulation  among 
friends,  and  Lockhart  in  his  first  statement,  an  early 
copy  of  which  he  sent  to  his  adversary  with  the  sig- 
nificant message  that  the  sender  would  remain  in  Lon- 
don for  twenty-four  hours,  denied  that  he  was  editor 
of  Blackwood,  but  said  nothing  as  to  deriving  any 
benefit  from  the  management  of  the  magazine.  A  few 
hours  after  sending  Scott  this  statement,  Lockhart  and 
Christie  were  advised  by  Dr.  Stoddart  (Hazlitt's 
brother-in-law,  then  in  charge  of  a  paper  called  TJie 
New  Times,  of  so  limited  a  circulation  as  to  prompt 


vni.]  ESSAYS  167 

,  Hazlitt,  who  hated  Stoddart,  to  say  that  any  one  who 
really  wished  to  keep  a  secret  could  not  do  better  than 

.confide  it  to  the  columns  of  his  relative's  newspaper) 
that  Lockhart's  case  would  be  improved  by  the  addi- 
tional statement  that  he  had  never  derived  any  pecu- 
niary benefit  from  the  management  of  Blackwood. 
This  addition  was  made,  and  the  statement  thus 
amended  circulated.  When  Scott  saw  the  amended 
statement,  which  he  did  not  do  until  Lockhart  had 
left  London,  he  at  once  pounced  upon  the  new  matter, 
and  in  one  of  his  statements  *  said  that  Lockhart  had 
told  his  friends  something  he  had  not  told  Scott,  but 
which  if  he  had  been  told  would  have  made  a  meeting 
possible.  This  was  a  nasty  thrust,  and  made  an  imme- 
diate answer  from  Christie,  Lockhart  being  away, 
an  absolute  necessity.  Mr.  Christie  therefore  told  in 
print  how  the  addition  came  to  be  made  on  the  advice 
of  Stoddart ;  and  added  a  few  sarcastic  words  to  the 
effect  that  if  after  his  explanation  Scott  had  any 
friends  who  were  not  satisfied,  he  was  welcome  to  the 
whole  weight  of  their  good  opinion.  Thereupon  Scott, 
who  had  not  seemed  over-eager  to  fight  Lockhart,  fell 
upon  Christie  and  demanded  that  he  should  say  in 
public  that  he  meant  nothing  disrespectful  to  Scott, 
and  on  Christie's  refusal  sent  him  a  challenge. 

The  story  so  far  is  a  Comedy  of  Errors;  it  was 
now  to  become  a  Tragedy.  Scott's  "friends"  were 
Mr.  Patmore  (the  father  of  the  poet)  and  Mr.  Ho- 
ratio Smith,  two  hopelessly  incompetent  persons.  Mr. 
Christie's  friend  was  Mr.  Traill,  the  father  of  Mr. 
H.  D.  Traill.  Mr.  Patmore  alone  was  with  Scott  at 

1  Scott's  statements  may  be  read  in  the  London  Magazine  for 
February  1821,  and  Lockhart's  in  Mr.  Lang's  Life. 


168  WILLIAM   IIAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Chalk  Farm  on  the  16th  of  February  1821.  Christie 
fired  in  the  air,  Scott  fired  and  missed.  The  matter 
ought  then  to  have  been  ended  by  Mr.  Patrnore 
declaring  himself  satisfied ;  but  second  shots  were 
allowed  to  be  interchanged,  and  this  time  Scott  fell 
mortally  wounded.  He  died  on  the  27th  of  the  month, 
leaving  a  widow  and  two  children. 

Mr.  Lang,  who  recounts  the  whole  affair  with 
candour  and  feeling  in  his  Life  of  Lockhart,  success- 
fully vindicates  Lockhart  from  any  blame  in  this 
unfortunate  and  bungled  business;  and  as  for  Mr. 
Christie,  if  he  had  been  a  Generalissimo  of  Spain, 
instead  of  a  Conveyancer  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  he  could 
not  have  behaved  better. 

The  poet  Campbell,  who  never  forgot  the  charge 
of  plagiarising  Blair's  Angels1  Visits,  used  to  go  about 
saying  that  Hazlitt  had  egged  Scott  on  to  fight  by 
remarking  that,  of  course,  he  (Hazlitt)  was  not  a  fight- 
ing man;  but  if  he  had  been,  why  then,  etc.,  etc. 
There  is  no  need  to  believe  this.  Scott  and  Hazlitt 
were  not  intimate  friends,  and  no  traces  remain  of 
the  latter  having  been  personally  mixed  up  in  the 
affair  either  in  its  early  stages  with  Lockhart  or  at 
the  end  with  Christie. 

It  is  impossible  in  a  Life  of  Hazlitt  entirely  to  over- 
look the  brutalities  of  the  early  numbers  of  Blackivood's 
Magazine,  but  they  are  now  far  off,  if  not  forgotten, 
things  ;  and  even  as  I  write,  there  comes  to  hand  from 
the  firm  of  William  Blackwood  &  Sons,  in  their  series 
of  English  Classics,  an  excellently  made  selection  (with 
a  portrait  without  pimples)  from  Hazlitt's  Lectures  and 
Essays  on  Poetry  and  Poets.  The  editor,  Mr.  D.  Nichol 
Smith,  whilst  sarcastically  observing  that  Gifford's 


vni.]  ESSAYS  169 

treatment  of  Hazlitt  in  the  Quarterly  forms  an  inter- 
esting chapter  in  the  history  of  reviewing,  maintains  a 
judicious  silence  about  any  other  reviews  or  reviewers. 
The  less  said  the  better.  Let  us  keep  a  guard  upon 
our  own  tongues  and  pens.  Biographers  must,  how- 
ever, be  allowed  a  reasonable  licence.  Hazlitt  was 
unhappily,  unlike  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  a  vulnerable 
man ;  and  if  he  was  hit  hard  and  below  the  belt,  he 
hit  back  again  as  hard  as  he  could,  and  sometimes  I 
am  afraid  below  the  belt.1 

Two  matters,  however,  in  which  Hazlitt  was  un- 
deniably mixed  up  now  present  themselves  for  treat- 
ment—  the  divorce  in  Scotland,  and  the  affair  with 
Miss  Walker,  which  latter  unpleasant  delusion  has  to 
be  mentioned  only  because  it  is  buried  or  embalmed 
in  a  book  of  Hazlitt's  it  is  impossible  to  ignore,  though 
disagreeable  to  read  —  the  Liber  Amoris  (1823). 

Of  the  two  incidents,  the  Scotch  divorce,  involving 
as  it  does  a  few  legal  points,  is  (by  comparison)  almost 
cheerful. 

Hazlitt's  relations  with  his  wife  were,  what  we  have 
seen,  uncomfortable;  they  did  not  hate  each  other, 
and  they  were  both  attached  to  the  boy,  but  they 

1  It  is  impossible  to  offer  any  apology  for  some  of  Hazlitt's 
articles  in  the  Examiner  and  Edinburgh  Review  about  Coleridge. 
Whether  the  latter  took  a  worthy  revenge  in  concocting  or  adapt- 
ing the  following  epitaph  or  epigram  on  hearing  of  Hazlitt's  death, 
I  leave  for  the  reader's  consideration :  — 

"  Under  this  stone  does  William  Hazlitt  lie 

Who  valued  nought )  . .    ,  ~    , 

__      . .        .    ,,        5  that  God  or  man  could  give. 

Thankless  of  all        ) 

He  lived  like  one  who  never  thought  to  die, 
He  died  like  one  who  dared  not  hope  to  live." 

As  a  criticism  of  Hazlitt  it  is  singularly  mal  a  propos. 


170  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

were  quite  willing  to  part  company.  Hazlitt's  habits 
as  a  husband  had  become  bad ;  and  but  for  an  amazing 
bluntness  of  feeling  on  his  wife's  part,  would  have 
been  unendurable.  He  also  made  complaints  about 
her.  In  1819  they  had  given  up  joint  housekeeping 
in  York  Street,  and  were  living  apart.  In  August 
1820  Hazlitt  saw  Miss  Walker,  and  became  infatuated. 
The  married  pair  were  minded  to  be  quit  of  the  yoke. 
How  was  it  to  be  done  ? 

In  England  until  1857  there  was  no  Divorce  Court, 
such  as  is  now  the  pride  of  the  land,  but  the  Spiritual 
Court  would  on  proof  of  certain  matrimonial  offences 
decree  a  separation  a  mensa  et  thoro  ;  and  then  if  it 
was  the  husband  who  had  obtained  the  decree,  he  could, 
if  rolling  in  money,  and  after  recovering  damages 
in  a  civil  action,  promote  the  passage  through  both 
Houses  of  Parliament  of  a  Bill  which,  if  it  passed,  put 
an  end  altogether  to  the  marriage  formerly  subsisting 
between  him  and  his  wife,  and  left  both  at  liberty  to 
marry  again.  It  was,  I  believe,  the  practice  of  the 
Bishops  in  the  House  of  Lords  when  a  Divorce  Bill 
was  in  Committee  to  depute  one  of  their  number  to 
move  an  amendment  forbidding  either  the  husband 
or  wife  to  marry  again  during  the  lifetime  of  the 
other,  and  this  amendment  was  usually  allowed  to 
be  carried,  on  the  honourable  understanding  that  at 
a  later  stage  the  original  clause  should  be  restored  — 
as  it  always  was. 

England  was  clearly  of  no  use  in  Hazlitt's  case. 
Some  kind  friend  directed  his  attention  to  Scotland. 
There  the  law  was  very  different.  In  Scotland  in 
1823,  as  now,  either  spouse  could  on  proof  of  the  un- 
faithfulness of  the  other  obtain  in  the  proper  Court 


vin.]  DELUSIONS  171 

a  decree  annulling  the  marriage  and  restoring  to  both 
parties  the  freedom  to  marry  again.  This  sounds 
fair,  and  may  be  so ;  but  the  result  is,  that  whenever 
the  parties  to  a  matrimonial  contract  or  relationship 
in  Scotland  are  minded  to  be  rid  of  the  obligation, 
and  the  husband  has  no  incurable  objection  to  formal 
proof  being  tendered  of  a  single  act  of  unfaithfulness 
on  his  part,  there  is  an  end  of  the  marriage. 

Hazlitt  had  no  delicacy  of  this  disabling  kind,  and 
to  Scotland  accordingly  the  parties  went,  not  to  be 
married,  but  to  be  divorced.1  The  husband  stopped, 
or  was  stopped,  perhaps,  by  want  of  money,  at  Stam- 
ford, where  he  could  find,  so  he  tells  us,  no  more 
agreeable  way  of  passing  the  time  than  by  writing 
in  a  tradesman's  book  —  a  butterman's,  I  think  —  the 
first  part  of  the  Liber  Amoris.  Mrs.  Hazlitt  followed 
by  sea,  landing  at  Leith  one  Sunday  morning  in  April 
1822;  and  in  Edinburgh  she  chiefly  remained. till  the 
18th  of  July,  when  her  marriage  being  annulled,  at 
all  events,  by  Scotch  law,  she  returned  to  London  on 
the  smack  Favourite  a  free  woman.  Her  husband  was 
in  Edinburgh  or  the  neighbourhood  during  the  same 
period,  and  they  occasionally  met,  had  a  cup  of  tea 
together,  and  abused  with  all  the  ingratitude  of  suitors 
"  the  law's  delay."  Hazlitt  managed  to  turn  an  honest 
and  much-needed  penny  by  lecturing  at  Glasgow  at 
the  Andersonian  Institute  on  Milton  and  Shakespeare, 

1  In  1823  it  was  settled  law  in  Scotland  that  if  the  defender  in  an 
action  for  divorce  had  been  resident  for  forty  days  within  Scotland, 
he  was  amenable  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Court.  This  is  no  longer 
good  Scotch  law,  and  was  never  recognised  as  law  at  all  in  England. 
Hazlitt's  second  marriage  in  England  was  bigamous.  (See  R.  v. 
Lol'ey,  Russell  and  Ryan,  237.  This  case  was  commented  upon  by 
Brougham  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  vol.  xlvii.  p.  112.) 


172  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Thomson  and  Burns ;  and  chancing  to  hear  Dr. 
Chalmers  preach,  he  made  excellent  copy  out  of  the 
occasion  for  publication  in  that  terrible  paper  the 
Liberal,  which  in  Wordsworth's  inflamed  fancy  "  was 
to  be  directed  against  everything  in  religion,  in 
morals,  and  probably  in  Government  and  literature, 
which  our  forefathers  have  been  accustomed  to  rever- 
ence." Poor  Mrs.  Hazlitt  had  no  such  gifts,  and  was 
sometimes  left  with  only  four  shillings  and  sixpence 
in  her  pocket,  but  none  the  less  she  somehow  managed 
pendente  lite  to  enjoy  herself  not  a  little,  whiling  away 
the  time  between  repeated  adjournments  by  a  trip 
through  the  Trossachs,  roaming  through  the  fair 
domains  of  Dalmeny,  and  even  taking  shipping  to 
Ireland  and  visiting  both  Dublin  and  Belfast. 

The  whole  scheme  was  nearly  wrecked  and  Hazlitt 
driven  distracted  by  this  good  woman's  scruples.  She 
was  confronted  with  the  oath  de  calumnia,  which,  as 
it  required  her  to  swear  on  her  knees  with  her  right 
hand  on  the  Gospels  that  there  had  been  no  concert 
between  her  and  her  husband  in  order  to  obtain  a 
divorce,  might  well  occasion  her  some  uneasiness,  for 
no  other  business  had  brought  them  both  to  Edin- 
burgh. In  her  distress,  for  she  was  not  a  dishonest 
woman,  she  consulted  a  member  of  the  Scottish  Bar,  * 
who  assured  her  that  the  oath  was  only  meant  to  hit 
cases  where  no  real  matrimonial  offence  had  ever  been 
committed ;  and  as  in  her  case  Hazlitt  had  committed 
such  offences  both  in  London  and  in  Edinburgh,  she 
might  fairly  take  it,  which  accordingly  she  did. 

Hazlitt,  I  need  not  say,  put  in  no  substantial  defence 

1  Mr.  Cranstoun,  afterwards  Lord  Corehouse. 


viii.]  DELUSIONS  173 

to  his  wife's  plaint;  formal  proof  was  tendered  of  a 
matrimonial  offence  in  Edinburgh,  and  the  desired 
decree  pronounced.  The  expenses  were  inconsider- 
able, £26,  10s.  Od.1 

Mrs.  Hazlitt's  Journal  kept  in  Scotland  during  this 
visit  is  published  in  a  recent  edition  of  the  Liber 
Amoris,  and  is  worth  a  cartload  of  such  books.  It 
is,  in  its  naivete  and  bluntness,  a  remarkable  record 
of  the  most  unsentimental  journey  ever  taken  —  not 
but  what  Mrs.  Hazlitt  had,  as  the  Journal  shows,  a 
fine  eye  for  scenery,  and  could  criticise  the  pictures 
in  Dalkeith  Palace  with  the  eye  of  a  connoisseur. 

This  collusive  divorce,  though  separating  the  parties, 
in  no  way  affected  their  friendliness  of  feeling.  Mrs. 
Hazlitt  frequently  visited  old  Mrs.  Hazlitt  and  Peggy, 
and  never  wrote  or  spoke  otherwise  than  affectionately 
of  "  William,"  and  they  also  occasionally  met.  Their 
son  was  happily  able  to  entertain  sincere  affection  for 
both  his  parents. 

The  other  matter  might  be  disposed  of  once  for  all 
in  Hazlitt's  own  words,  written  the  very  same  year 
that  saw  the  publication  of  the  Liber  Amoris  —  he  is 
citing  acquaintances  of  his  own  who  have  been  ruined 
with  their  eyes  wide  open  by  some  whim  or  fancy,  and 
he  mentions  one  "  who  divorced  his  wife  to  marry  a 
wench  at  a  lodging-house,  who  refused  to  have  him, 
and  whose  cruelty  and  charms  are  the  torments  of  his 

i  My  friend  Mr.  William  Mitchell,  S.S.C.,  of  Edinburgh,  has  been 
kind  enough  to  examine  in  the  General  Record  Room  in  the  Register 
House  the  process  of  Divorce  in  the  Consistorial  Court  of  Stoddart 
or  Hazlitt  v.  Hazlitt,  which,  he  tells  me,  verifies  in  all  particulars 
Mrs.  Hazlitt's  narrative,  whilst  rendering  no  support  to  the  scan- 
dalous version  Hazlitt  is  reported  to  have  given  to  Landor  in  Flor- 
ence (see  Lander's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  207). 


174  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

own  life  and  that  of  all  his  friends."  This  is  very  near 
the  truth,  though  as  Hazlitt  was  not  a  Tudor  monarch, 
he  could  hardly  have  divorced  his  wife,  even  in  Scot- 
land, had  she  not  been  quite  willing  to  be  quit  of  him 
on  account  of  his  infidelities. 

The  loves  of  the  middle-aged  are  never  agreeable 
subject-matter  for  the  pens  of  third  parties. 

"A  fool  at  forty  is  a  fool  indeed," 

and  this  affair  of  Hazlitt's  must  be  briefly  handled. 

The  Liber  Amoris,  which  has  been  written  about  in 
glowing  terms  by  a  gentle  lady,  and  pronounced  "  de- 
lightful "  by  a  noble  lord,  is  divided  into  three  parts. 
The  first,  written  at  Stamford  in  the  circumstances 
before  stated,  consists  of  conversations  supposed  to 
have  been  held  between  the  anonymous  author  and 
the  girl  at  the  lodging-house.  The  second  consists  of 
extracts  from  letters  actually  addressed  to  an  unnamed 
friend  (Patmore),  in  which  are  unfolded  the  passion, 
fury,  and  delusion  of  the  writer,  who  declares  the 
persistency  of  his  devotion  in  spite  of  much  that  might 
well  have  killed  it.  The  third  part  is  made  up  of 
three  long  letters  to  another  unnamed  friend  (Mr. 
Sheridan  Knowles)  narrating  the  conclusion  of  the 
affair  —  the  treachery,  wantonness,  and  hypocrisy  of 
the  girl  who  would  have  nothing  to  say  to  him,  pre- 
ferring the  addresses  of  another  lodger. 

The  facts  upon  which  the  book  is  supposed  to  rest 
are  now  offensively  familiar.  Miss  Walker  was  not  a 
servant  girl  properly  so  called,  but  a  tailor's  daughter 
whose  mother  kept  a  lodging-house  in  Southampton 
Buildings.  The  tailor  had  three  daughters.  The 


viii.]  DELUSIONS  176 

eldest  had  married  respectably,  and  she  and  her  hus- 
band were  known  to  Hazlitt;  Sarah,  the  second 
daughter,  is  described  by  Procter  as  having  a  round 
small  face,  glassy  eyes,  a  snake-like  walk,  and  being 
very  silent  and  demure,  with  a  steady  unmoving,  un- 
comfortable gaze  upon  the  person  she  was  addressing, 
but  Hazlitt  gives  a  slightly  more  agreeable  portrait  in 
his  Table-Talk  where  he  writes :  — 

"  The  greatest  hypocrite  I  ever  knew  was  a  little,  demure, 
pretty,  modest-looking  girl  with  eyes  timidly  cast  upon  the 
ground  and  an  air  soft  as  enchantment.  The  only  circum- 
stance that  could  lead  to  a  suspicion  of  her  true  character 
was  a  cold,  sullen,  watery,  glazed  look  about  the  eyes,  which 
she  bent  on  vacancy,  as  if  determined  to  avoid  all  explanation 
with  yours.  I  might  have  spied  in  their  glittering,  motion- 
less surface  the  rocks  and  quicksands  that  awaited  one  below."1 

Of  the  genuineness  of  Hazlitt's  infatuation  there 
can  be  no  doubt,  although  Liber  Amoris  itself  is  not  a 
book  of  good  faith.  Procter's  account  of  it  would  be 
amusing  but  for  the  subject-matter.  "  His  (Hazlitt's) 
intellect  was  completely  subdued  by  an  insane  passion. 
He  was,  for  a  time,  unable  to  think  or  talk  of  anything 
else.  He  abandoned  criticism  and  books  as  idle 
matters,  and  fatigued  every  person  whom  he  met  by 
expressions  of  her  love,  of  her  deceit,  and  of  his  own 
vehement  disappointment.  This  was  when  he  lived 
in  Southampton  Buildings,  Holborn.  Upon  one  occa- 
sion I  know  that  he  told  the  story  of  his  attachment 
to  five  different  persons  in  the  same  day,  and  at  each 
time  entered  into  minute  details  of  his  love  story.  (  I 
am  a  cursed  fool,'  said  he  to  me.  '  I  saw  J going 

1  Essay  on  the  Knowledge  of  Character. 


176  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

into  Wills'  Coffee  House  yesterday  morning ;  he  spoke 
to  me.  I  followed  him  into  the  house,  and  whilst  he 
lunched  I  told  him  the  whole  story.  Then  I  wandered 

into  the  Regent's  Park,  where  I  met  one  of  M 's 

sons.  I  walked  with  him  some  time,  and  on  his  using 
some  civil  expression,  by  Jove,  sir,  I  told  him  the  whole 
story ! '  (Here  he  mentioned  another  instance  which  I 
forget.)  '  Well,  sir '  (he  went  on),  1 1  then  went  and 
called  on  Hay  don,  but  he  was  out.  There  was  only 
his  man,  Salmon,  there ;  but,  by  Jove,  I  could  not  help 
myself.  It  all  came  out  —  the  whole  cursed  story. 
Afterwards  I  went  to  look  at  some  lodgings  at  Pimlico. 
The  landlady  at  one  place,  after  some  explanations  as 
to  rent,  etc.,  said  to  me  very  kindly,  "  I  am  afraid  you 
are  not  well,  sir  ?  "  "No,  ma'am,"  said  I,  "I  am  not 
well,"  and  on  inquiring  further,  the  devil  take  me  if  I 
did  not  let  out  the  whole  story  from  beginning  to  end.' " 1 
Lord  Houghton  once  wrote  in  the  Fortnightly  Review 
"  of  the  wondrous  servant  girl  who  drove  Hazlitt  mad 
by  the  dignity  that  petrified  her  beauty  and  froze  the 
passion  it  inflamed."  2  "  Wondrous  "  and  "  dignity  " 
are  strange  words  to  apply  to  the  Liber  Amoris  ;  but 
no  doubt  when  he  set  about  concocting  the  book,  the 
literary  point  Hazlitt  wished  to  make  was  that,  like  the 
madman  in  Don  Quixote  he  is  for  ever  quoting,  "he 
had  worshipped  a  statue,  hunted  the  wind,  and  cried 
aloud  in  the  desert."  His  literary  failure  to  make  out 
any  adequate  image  of  a  damsel  in  stone  is  to  be  ac- 
counted for  by  his  having  printed  in  the  book  too 
much  of  his  original  letters  to  Patmore  and  Knowles. 
He  did  not  cut  out  enough,  and  what  he  left  in  spoiled 

1  Procter's  Autobiographical  Fragments  (1873) . 

8  Fortnightly  Review,  January  1881, '  Notes  on  Endymion.' 


vni.]  DELUSIONS  177 

the  romance  without  telling  the  truth.  The  letters,  as 
actually  written  by  Hazlitt  to  Patmore  and  Knowles, 
are  now  unhappily  in  print.  How  they  came  to  be 
preserved  is  beyond  guessing.  Preserved  however 
they  were,  and  printed  they  have  been.  I  will  say  no 
more  about  them  than  that  they  make  the  subject 
intolerable.  If  the  statements  made  in  them  are  true, 
the  tailor's  wife  was  a  Doll  Tearsheet,  and  her  house 
and  her  daughter  (her  prudish  tongue  notwithstand- 
ing) what  the  house  and  daughter  of  Doll  Tearsheet 
might  be  expected  to  be.  On  the  other  hand,  it  would 
be  grossly  unfair  not  to  remember  that  neither  tailor's 
wife  nor  daughter  has  ever  been  heard  in  her  own 
defence ;  and  that  the  girl,  whose  wisdom  in  refusing 
to  marry  Hazlitt  cannot  be  disputed,  subsequently 
made,  as  her  sister  before  her  had  done,  what  is  called 
a  respectable  marriage. 

Anyhow,  the  whole  sentimental  structure  of  the 
Liber  Amoris  now  sinks  below  the  stage,  and  joins  the 
realm  of  things  unspeakable  —  "vile  kitchen  stuff," 
fit  only  for  the  midden. 

Hazlitt  got  £100  for  the  Liber  Amoris,  which  John 
Hunt  published  in  1823.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  the 
unholy  joy  of  Blackwood,  whose  writers  were  not 
likely  to  overlook  a  casual  reference  it  contains  to 
Craigcrook,  "  where  lives  the  prince  of  critics  and  the 
king  of  men."  It  was  certainly  hard  upon  Jeffrey  to 
be  dragged  into  such  mire. 

Two  things  may  usefully  be  remembered.  Hazlitt 
wrote  some  of  his  best  essays  during  the  duration  of 
this  madness  —  for  example,  nearly  the  whole  of  the 
second  volume  of  Table-Talk,  including  the  noble 
discourse  "  On  the  Fear  of  Death " ;  and  in  another 


178  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

style,  but  equally  triumphant,  the  famous  "Fight." 
Secondly,  the  filial  language  of  Hazlitt's  son:  "For 
some  time  previous  to  this  my  father  had  fallen  into 
an  infatuation  which  he  himself  illustrated  in  glowing 
and  eloquent  language  in  a  regretted  publication  called 
Liber  Amoris.  The  subject  is  a  painful  one,  and 
admits  of  but  one  cheerful  consolation  —  that  my 
father's  name  and  character  was  but  momentarily 
dimmed  by  what  indeed  was  but  a  momentary  delu- 
sion." 

"0  Art,  lovely  Art,  'balm  of  hurt  minds,  chief 
nourisher  in  life's  feast,  great  Nature's  second  course,' 
thee  we  invoke,  and  not  in  vain."  In  this  somewhat 
braggadocio  mood  do  we  find  Hazlitt,  in  the  December 
number  of  the  London  Magazine  for  1822,  beginning  a 
spirited  description  of  the  Angerstein  Gallery,  now 
happily  included  in  our  great  National  Collection. 

At  the  end  of  1822,  after  he  had  got  his  bit  of  John 
Buncleism,  as  his  grandson  aptly  describes  his  sham 
Liber  Amoris,  off  his  hands,  Hazlitt,  with  the  undesir- 
able Patniore  as  a  companion,  made  a  round  of  the 
most  famous  picture  collections  in  England  —  the 
Angerstein,  the  Dulwich,  and  Lord  Stafford's  galleries, 
those  of  Windsor  Castle,  Hampton  Court,  Wilton, 
Stourhead,  Petworth,  Burleigh  House,  Fonthill  Abbey, 
and  Blenheim,  all  of  which  he  describes  in  fine  style 
in  the  London  Magazine  during  the  year  1823. 

In  these  accounts  we  find  Hazlitt  himself  again. 
He  is  greatly  enjoying  himself,  and  goes  his  round  in 
search  of  pleasing  sensations  and  ecstatic  moments, 
finding  them  in  a  ruff  or  a  wrinkle  of  Rembrandt's,  in 
a  portrait  by  Vandyke,  in  a  Rubens  or  a  Claude,  in 
Guides,  Correggios,  and  the  Caracci.  He  took  no 


viii.]  PICTURE   GALLERIES  179 

notes,  feeling  that  he  would  rather  make  a  mistake 
now  and  then  than  spoil  his  whole  pleasure  in  look- 
ing at  a  fine  collection.  Hazlitt  made  many  mistakes, 
but  he  never  spoilt  his  pleasure  or  ours.  Hazlitt  is  a 
good  critic  of  pictures  in  much  the  same  way  as  he 
is  a  good  critic  of  books.  As  one  who  had  at  least 
tried  to  be  a  painter,  he  knew  that  much  of  the 
painter's  art  is  mechanical ;  and  as  one  who  had  wor- 
shipped the  great  masters  of  the  art,  perhaps  only  too 
fiercely,  he  also  knew  how  much  was  incommunicable. 
Beyond  this  he  took  no  great  pains  to  qualify  himself 
as  a  critic  of  the  Fine  Arts.  Pie  had  read  Kichard- 
son's  book  and  Sir  Joshua's  and  Flaxman's  Discourses, 
and  Burke  on  "  The  Sublime  and  Beautiful,"  and 
Hume  on  Taste,  and  had  talked  Art  with  Northcote 
and  Haydon ;  but  he  had  little  of  the  hard  student  in 
his  composition,  being  always  well  content,  with  Lord 
Foppington  in  one  of  his  favourite  plays,  to  rely  upon 
the  sprouts  of  his  own  brain. 

Hazlitt  excels  in  describing  a  picture ;  and  when,  as 
in  the  case  of  Titian's  "Peter  Martyr,"  the  original 
has  been  destroyed,  a  description  by  Hazlitt  is  a  pos- 
session ;  otherwise  I  do  not  know  that  an  eloquent, 
and  probably  in  details  inaccurate,  description  of  a 
picture  is  of  much  service.  It  is  the  same  thing  with 
descriptions  of  places  in  poetry  —  they  are  usually 
failures  the  moment  they  descend  to  the  particular 
details.  Wordsworth  can  describe  a  glen,  but  not 
Glencoe. 

The  value  of  Hazlitt's  art-criticism  is  that  it  disposes 
you  to  be  fond  of  pictures.  Mr.  Gosse  has  well  said  : 
"  At  a  time  when  little  attention  was  paid  to  art 
criticism,  when  in  England  at  least  it  was  bound  up 


180  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP.  vin. 

with  an  empty  connoisseurship,  and  lost  in  the  jargon 
of  the  dilettante,  it  is  the  glory  of  Hazlitt  that  he 
claimed  for  it  the  dignity  of  a  branch  of  literature  and 
expended  on  it  the  wealth  of  his  own  fervid  and 
impassioned  imagination." 1 

1  See  Preface  to  Conversations  of  James  Northcote,  edited  by 
Edmund  Gosse.     (R.  Bentley  and  Son,  1894.) 


CHAPTER  IX 

MAXIMS,  TRAVELS,  AND   THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  AGE 

NOTHING  was  more  characteristic  of  Hazlitt  than  the 
attempt  he  made  in  this  year  1823  to  epitomise  in  a 
series  of  sentences,  maxims,  or  reflections,  his  philoso- 
phy of  life.  It  is  true  that  after  a  prolonged  period  of 
stubbornness  of  mind  and  stiffness  of  pen,  a  period  upon 
which  he  looked  back  with  an  odd  mixture  of  pride 
and  shame,  he  had  now  become  one  of  the  most  fluent 
of  authors,  and  poured  out  his  rnind  on  a  hundred 
themes  with  abundant  ease;  but  none  the  less,  he 
never  lost  his  admiration  for  hard  thinking  and  rocky 
sentences.  His  own  writings  are  full  of  outbursts  of 
eloquent  reminiscence,  of  sentimental  dreams,  of  auto- 
biographical detail,  but  that  is  not  the  style  he  most 
admired.  What  he  loved  best  was  the  downright 
unadorned  honesty  of  purpose  of  Jonathan  Edwards, 
and  the  reticence  that  prevented  Tucker  from  ever 
mentioning  the  fact  that  by  the  time  he  came  to  write 
the  last  volumes  of  the  Light  of  Nature  pursued  he 
was  blind.  "The  golden  mean,"  so  Hazlitt  writes, 
"  is  indeed  an  exact  description  of  the  mode  of  life  I 
should  like  to  live,  and  of  the  style  I  should  like  to 
write,  but,  alas  !  I  am  afraid  I  shall  never  succeed  in 
either  object  of  my  ambition."  x 

1  Tour  in  France  and  Italy. 
181 


182  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

He  says  in  the  preface  to  the  Characteristics,  a  small 
book  published  anonymously,  to  escape  abuse,  in  1823, 
that  it  was  suggested  by  La  Rochefoucauld,  but  it 
jumped  with  his  humour  though  alien  to  the  style  now 
become  his.  Hazlitt  tried  his  best  to  squeeze  his 
humours  into  a  narrow  bed,  to  pen  his  nocking  fancies 
and  prejudices  into  one  fold.  His  success  is  partial. 
He  could  not  keep  his  passion  for  Bonaparte  or  his 
dislike  of  Pitt  out  of  his  maxims,  which  at  times 
run  to  a  length  unendurable  in  a  maxim,  however 
praiseworthy  in  a  sermon  or  commendable  in  an  essay. 

A  few  specimens  shall  be  given  of  his  gallant  at- 
tempt, worthy  of  imitation  by  the  whole  quill-driving 
fraternity,  to  cut  himself  short :  — 

"  It  is  harder  to  praise  a  friend  than  an  enemy.  By  the 
last  we  may  acquire  a  reputation  for  candour ;  by  the  first 
we  only  seem  to  discharge  a  debt." 

"  Society  is  a  more  level  surface  than  we  imagine.  Wise 
men  or  absolute  fools  are  hard  to  be  met  with,  as  there  are 
few  giants  or  dwarfs.  The  learned  in  Lbooks  is  ignorant 
of  the  world ;  and  he  who  is  ignorant  of  books  is  often  well 
acquainted  with  other  things,  for  life  is  of  the  same  length 
to  all,  and  the  mind  cannot  be  idle." 

"  The  study  of  metaphysics  has  this  advantage  at  least  — 
it  promotes  an  uprightness  of  understanding  which  is  a  cure 
for  the  spirit  of  lying.  He  who  has  devoted  himself  to  the 
discovery  of  truth  feels  neither  pride  nor  pleasure  in  the  in- 
vention of  falsehood.  If  you  find  a  person  given  to  vulgar 
shifts  and  rhodomontade  who  at  the  same  time  tells  you  he  is 
a  metaphysician,  do  not  believe  him." 

"  It  is  wonderful  how  soon  men  acquire  talents  for  offices 
of  trust  and  importance.  We  assume  an  equality  with 
circumstances." 

"  Men  will  die  for  an  opinion  as  soon  as  for  anything 
else." 

"  We  are  only  justified  in  rejecting  prejudices  when  we 


ix.]  MAXIMS  183 

can  explain  the  grounds  of  them,  or  when  they  are  at  war 
with  Nature,  which  is  the  strongest  prejudice  of  all." 

"It  is  a  sign  that  real  religion  is  in  a  state  of  decay 
when  passages  in  compliment  of  it  are  applauded  at  the 
theatre." 

"  If  the  world  were  good  for  nothing  else,  it  is  a  fine  sub- 
ject for  speculation." 

I  have  chosen  eight  out  of  four  hundred  and  thirty- 
four  maxims  or  reflections,  nor  will  their  good  quality 
be  denied.  It  is  strange  to  think  of  the  Liber  Amoris 
and  the  Characteristics  appearing  within  a  few  months 
of  each  other.  Neither  had  any  sale. 

Although  the  cottages  at  Winterslow,  which  were 
settled  upon  Mrs.  Hazlitt,  had  been  long  exchanged 
for  an  annuity  payable  to  the  lady  during  her  life 
(under  a  power,  I  presume,  contained  in  the  settle- 
ment), Hazlitt  retained  the  habit  of  spending  a  good 
deal  of  his  time  in  the  neighbourhood,  his  usual  quar- 
ters being  an  ancient  inn  known  as  "  The  Hutt,"  on 
the  Great  Western  Koad.  Close  by  were  the  woods  of 
Tudorsleigh  and  Clarendon.  Stonehenge  was  within 
a  walk,  and  here  Hazlitt's  perturbed  spirit  found  its 
nearest  approach  to  peace.  He  wrote  much  during  his 
later  years  at  the  Hutt,  Winterslow. 

In  1824  Hazlitt  got  married  to  a  widow  lady  he 
appears  to  have  met  for  the  first  time  in  a  stage  coach, 
and  on  a  stage  coach  nobody  could  well  be  more 
agreeable  than  Hazlitt.  Very  little  is  known  of  this 
incident,  not  even  the  lady's  maiden  name.  Her  late 
husband  was  a  Colonel  Bridgewater,  who  in  his  will 
is  described  as  of  the  island  of  Grenada,  and  by  that 
disposition  left  his  widow  Isabella  £300  a  year.  As 
the  second  Mrs.  Hazlitt  lived  on  till  1869,  she  was  in 


184  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

1824  probably  a  good  deal  younger  than  her  new  hus- 
band, then  in  his  forty-seventh  year. 

When  or  where  the  marriage  took  place  is  not 
recorded,  but  on  the  1st  of  September  1824  the  couple 
left  Brighton  in  the  Dieppe  packet.  Hazlitt .  was 
essentially  a  man  who  lived  by  writing.  Whatever  he 
did,  creditable  or  discreditable,  wise  or  foolish,  he  put 
it  first  upon  paper,  and  then  upon  the  market.  Accord- 
ingly, we  have  a  full  record  of  his  travels  in  France 
and  Italy  made  in  the  circumstances  just  narrated. 
Happily  there  are  no  love  rhapsodies.  The  second 
Mrs.  Hazlitt  remains  unsung,  only  one,  and  that  the 
very  barest,  reference  being  made  to  her.  The  "  Tour  " 
first  appeared  in  the  Morning  Clironide,  and  was  after- 
wards published  in  book  form  by  Hunt  and  Clarke 
in  1826.  There  is  no  need  to  accuse  Hazlitt  of  making 
mercenary  marriages,  for  both  his  wives  must  have 
been  economical  dames  if  they  did  not  spend  all  they 
had  upon  themselves.  Hazlitt  had  always  to  scribble 
for  his  living.  Had  he  had  his  own  way,  he  would 
have  been  a  country  gentleman  of  good  estate,  retired 
habits,  and  philosophical  opinions ;  writing  in  a  style 
founded  upon  Arbuthnot's  on  the  plagiarisms  of  Locke 
and  Malthus  and  the  true  principles  of  human  action; 
and  fleeting  away  the  time  not  so  occupied  in  turning 
over  old  prints,  devouring  the  Waverley  Novels,  and 
mooning  about  his  shrubberies  with  Rousseau  in  one 
pocket  and  Congreve  or  Vanbrugh  in  another.  But  no 
such  way  of  life  was  ever  open  to  him,  and  no  such 
snug  retreat  was  ever  to  be  his. 

The  Notes  of  a  Journey  through  France  and  Italy  is  a 
manly,  sensible,  if  perhaps  a  little  drawn  out,  record  of 
travel.  Hazlitt  dishes  up  his  opinions  and  modes  of 


ix.]  TRAVELS  185 

thought,  whims  and  fancies,  over  and  over  again ;  but 
it  is  not  easy  to  grow  tired  of  them ;  there  is  always 
meat  on  his  bones  for  the  reader  to  consume. 

His  travels,  like  everything  else  he  did  with  his  pen, 
are  intensely  literary.  The  style  is  excellent,  but  for 
the  truth  you  would  not  always  vouch.  Hazlitt's 
description  of  his  fellow-passengers  on  the  steam- 
packet,  though  lifelike,  is  not  so  convincing  as  Carlyle. 
You  do  not  feel  sure  they  were  on  the  boat :  — 

"  We  had  a  fine  passage  in  the  steamboat  (Sept.  1, 1824). 
Not  a  cloud,  scarce  a  breath  of  air ;  a  moon,  and  then  star- 
light, till  the  dawn,  with  rosy  fingers,  ushered  us  into  Dieppe. 
Our  fellow-passengers  were  pleasant  and  unobtrusive :  an 
English  party  of  the  better  sort ;  a  member  of  Parliament, 
delighted  to  escape  from  '  late  hours  and  bad  company ' ;  an 
English  general,  proud  of  his  bad  French ;  a  captain  in  the 
navy,  glad  to  enter  a  French  harbour  peaceably ;  a  country 
squire,  extending  his  inquiries  beyond  his  paternal  acres ;  the 
younger  sons  of  wealthy  citizens,  refined  through  the  strainers 
of  a  university  education,  and  finishing  off  with  foreign 
travel ;  a  young  lawyer,  quoting  Peregrine  Pickle,  and 
divided  between  his  last  circuit  and  projected  tour.  There 
was  also  a  young  Dutchman,  looking  mild  through  his  mus- 
tachios,  and  a  new  married  couple  (a  French  Jew  and  Jew- 
ess) who  grew  uxorious  from  the  effects  of  sea-sickness,  and 
took  refuge  from  the  qualms  of  the  disorder  in  paroxysms  of 
tenderness.  We  had  some  difficulty  in  getting  into  the 
harbour,  and  had  to  wait  till  morning  for  the  tide." 

The  first  thing  Hazlitt  did  on  getting  to  Paris  was 
to  hurry  to  the  Louvre,  there  to  be  reminded  of  1802, 
when  Bonaparte  was  First  Consul,  when  the  galleries 
were  full  of  "  loot,"  and  Hazlitt  himself  was  to  be  a 
painter. 

"  Oh  !  for  the  change  'twixt  Now  and  Then." 


186  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Still  Hazlitt,  as  his  wont  was,  enjoyed  himself,  even 
though  Bonaparte  was  dead,  and  Legitimacy  squatted 
like  a  toad  in  every  corner  of  the  gallery.  He  searched 
curiously  for  the  pictures  he  had  copied  with  such 
feverish  haste  two-and-twenty  years  before.  Oddly 
enough,  some  one  else  was  wandering  through  the  same 
galleries  searching  for  the  same  pictures,  and  bitterly 
disappointed  because  she  could  not  find  them.  The 
first  Mrs.  Hazlitt,  ever  fond  of  a  jaunt,  was  also  in 
Paris,  looking  for  "  The  Transfiguration  "  William  had 
copied.  The  two  met  and  renewed  their  chat.  This 
Mrs.  Hazlitt,  writing  home  to  her  boy,  then  at  school 
in  Tavistock,  mentions  that  she  had  found  his  father 
in  Paris  "  splendidly  situated "  as  to  his  rooms,  in 
"  The  Hotel  des  Strangers,"  Hue  Vivienne,  and  getting 
his  food  cooked  in  the  English  way,  "  which  is  a  very 
great  object  to  him,  but  terribly  expensive."  Hazlitt 
confided  to  his  former  wife  how  Taylor  and  Hessey 
would  not  give  him  what  he  wanted  for  the  book  of 
travels  he  was  writing,  and  that  he  meant  to  sell  it  to 
the  highest  bidder  on  his  return.  Mrs.  Hazlitt  also 
tells  the  boy  that  his  father  had  "  talked  of  sending 
him  some  money,"  but  "  found  himself  rather  short." 
No  mention  is  made  of  the  other  Mrs.  Hazlitt. 

Hazlitt  had  now  no  affection  for  the  French,  who 
had  been  content  to  forget  Bonaparte  and  go  back 
like  whipped  dogs  to  the  Bourbon  kennels;  and  he 
philosophises  about  their  character,  their  poetry,  their 
drama,  and  their  pictures  in  an  unfriendly  spirit.  He 
positively  prefers  the  English,  of  whom  he  remarks 
with  great  point  that  their  vanity  does  not  heal  the 
wounds  made  in  their  pride,  nor  do  they  ever  forgive 
the  men  by  whose  corruption  or  stupidity  those 


ix.]  TEAVELS  187 

wounds  have  been  inflicted ;  but  the  French,  he  adds 
with  bitter  significance,  are  soon  reconciled  to  fate. 
Even  English  cooking  could  not  make  Paris  in  1824  a 
pleasant  place.  Hazlitt  had  preached  peace  with 
France,  and  now  peace  there  was,  but  with  a  France 
with  whom  he  would  be  at  war.  On  the  whole,  he 
keeps  his  temper  pretty  well,  though  I  doubt  whether 
a  more  venomous  footnote  was  ever  penned,  even  by  a 
commentator,  than  the  one  in  which  Hazlitt  stabs  his 
brother-in-law,  Dr.  Stoddart,  who  is,  d,  propos  of  noth- 
ing, suddenly  informed  that  had  he  remained  a  revo- 
lutionary, he  would  probably  have  been  as  ridiculous 
as  he  was  as  a  renegade  —  "  the  great  misfortune  of  a 
certain  class  of  persons  being  that  they  were  ever  born 
or  heard  of." 

Hazlitt's  descriptions  of  Paris  and  Kome  as  those 
cities  were  in  1824  are  frank  and  vigorous.  Paris,  he 
says  bluntly,  is  a  beast  of  a  city  to  be  in.  There  is 
not  a  place,  so  he  declared,  where  you  can  set  your 
foot  in  peace  or  comfort,  unless  you  can  take  refuge  in 
one  of  their  hotels,  where  you  are  locked  up  as  in  an 
old-fashioned  citadel,  without  any  of  the  dignity  of 
romance. 

"Fancy  yourself  in  London  with  the  footpath  taken  away, 
so  that  you  are  forced  to  walk  along  the  middle  of  the  streets 
with  a  dirty  gutter  running  through  them,  fighting  your  way 
through  coaches,  waggons,  and  hand-carts  trundled  along  by 
large  mastiff-dogs,  with  the  houses  twice  as  high,  greasy 
holes  for  shop  windows,  and  piles  of  wood,  greenstalls,  and 
wheelbarrows  placed  at  the  doors,  and  the  contents  of  wash- 
hand  basins  pouring  out  of  a  dozen  stories,  —  fancy  all  this 
and  worse,  and,  with  a  change  of  scene,  you  are  in  Paris. 

"  Paris  is  a  vast  pile  of  tall  and  dirty  alleys,  of  slaughter- 
houses and  barbers'  shops  —  an  immense  suburb  huddled 


188  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

together  within  the  walls  so  close,  that  you  cannot  see  the 
loftiness  of  the  buildings  for  the  narrowness  of  the  streets, 
and  where  all  that  is  fit  to  live  in,  and  best  worth  looking 
at,  is  turned  out  upon  quays,  the  boulevards,  and  their  im- 
mediate vicinity." 

Over  the  garden  of  the  Tuileries  he  grows  eloquent, 
but  hardly  as  much  as  he  does  over  —  what  think  you  ? 
—  the  west  end  of  London. 

"  But  for  a  real  West  End,  for  a  solid  substantial  cut  into 
the  heart  of  a  metropolis,  commend  me  to  the  streets  and 
squares  on  each  side  of  the  top  of  Oxford  Street,  with  Gros- 
venor  and  Portman  Squares  at  one  end,  and  Cavendish  and 
Hanover  at  the  other,  linked  together  by  Bruton,  South 
Audley,  and  a  hundred  other  fine  old  streets,  with  a  broad, 
airy  pavement,  a  display  of  comfort,  of  wealth,  of  taste,  and 
rank  all  about  you,  each  house  seeming  to  have  been  the 
residence  of  some  respectable  old  English  family  for  half  a 
century  past,  and  with  Portland  Place,  looking  out  towards 
Hampstead  and  Highgate,  with  their  hanging  gardens  and 
lofty  terraces,  and  Primrose  Hill  nestling  beneath  them,  in 
green,  pastoral  luxury,  the  delight  of  the  Cockneys,  the 
aversion  of  Sir  Walter  and  his  merry  men ! " 

Eome  cannot  number  Hazlitt  among  her  victims. 

" '  As  London  is  to  the  meanest  country  town,  so  is  Rome 
to  every  other  city  in  the  world.' 

"  So  said  an  old  friend  of  mine,  and  I  believed  him  till  I 
saw  it.  This  is  not  the  Rome  I  expected  to  see.  No  one 
from  being  in  it  would  know  he  was  in  the  place  that  had 
been  twice  mistress  of  the  world.  I  do  not  understand  how 
Nicolas  Poussin  could  tell,  taking  up  a  handful  of  earth,  that 
it  was  '  a  part  of  the  ETERNAL  CITY.'  In  Oxford  an  air  of 
learning  breathes  from  the  very  walls ;  halls  and  colleges 
meet  your  eye  in  every  direction ;  you  cannot  for  a  moment 


ix.]  TEAVELS  189 

forget  where  you  are.  In  London  there  is  a  look  of  wealth 
and  populousness  which  is  to  be  found  nowhere  else.  In 
Rome  you  are  for  the  most  part  lost  in  a  mass  of  tawdiy, 
fulsome  commonplaces.  It  is  not  the  contrast  of  pig-styes 
and  palaces  that  I  complain  of,  the  distinction  between  the 
old  and  new ;  what  I  object  to  is  the  want  of  any  such 
striking  contrast,  but  instead  an  almost  uninterrupted  suc- 
cession of  narrow,  vulgar-looking  streets,  where  the  smell  of 
garlic  prevails  over  the  odour  of  antiquity,  with  the  dingy, 
melancholy  flat  fronts  of  modern  built  houses,  that  seem  in 
search  of  an  owner.  A  dunghill,  an  outhouse,  the  weeds 
growing  under  an  imperial  arch  offend  me  not ;  but  what 
has  a  greengrocer's  stall,  a  stupid  English  china  warehouse, 
a  putrid  trattoria,  a  barber's  sign,  an  old  clothes  or  old 
picture  shop,  or  a  Gothic  palace,  with  two  or  three  lacqueys 
in  modern  liveries  lounging  at  the  gate,  to  do  with  ancient 
Rome  1  No ;  this  is  not  the  wall  that  Romulus  leaped 
over;  this  is  not  the  Capitol  where  Julius  Csesar  fell. 
Instead  of  standing  on  seven  hills,  it  is  situated  in  a  low 
valley ;  the  golden  Tiber  is  a  muddy  stream ;  St.  Peter's  is 
not  equal  to  St.  Paul's;  the  Vatican  falls  short  of  the 
Louvre,  as  it  was  in  my  time ;  but  I  thought  that  here 
were  works  immovable,  immortal,  inimitable  on  earth,  and 
lifting  the  soul  half-way  to  heaven.  I  find  them  not,  or  only 
what  I  had  seen  before  in  different  ways.  The  stanzas  of 
Raphael  are  faded,  or  no  better  than  the  prints ;  and  the 
mind  of  Michael  Angelo's  figures,  of  which  no  traces  are  to  be 
found  in  the  copies,  is  equally  absent  from  the  walls  of  the 
Sistine  Chapel.  Rome  is  great  only  in  ruins  :  the  Colosseum, 
the  Pantheon,  the  Arch  of  Constantino  fully  answered  my 
expectations ;  and  an  air  breathes  round  her  stately  avenues, 
serene,  blissful,  like  the  mingled  breath  of  spring  and  winter, 
betwixt  life  and  death,  betwixt  hope  and  despair.  There  is 
little  verdure,  nor  are  any  trees  planted,  on  account  of  their 
bad  effects  on  the  air.  Happy  climate  !  in  which  shade  and 
sunshine  are  alike  fatal.  The  Jews  (I  may  add,  while  I 
think  of  it)  are  shut  up  here  in  a  quarter  by  themselves. 
I  see  no  reason  for  it.  It  is  a  distinction  not  worth  the 
making." 


190  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

On  St.  Peter's  he  philosophises  as  follows :  — 

"  After  all,  St.  Peter's  does  not  seem  to  me  the  chief  boast 
or  most  imposing  display  of  the  Catholic  religion.  Old 
Melrose  Abbey,  battered  to  pieces  and  in  ruins,  as  it  is, 
impresses  me  much  more  than  the  collective  pride  and  pomp 
of  Michael  Angelo's  great  work.  Popery  is  here  at  home, 
and  may  strut  and  swell  and  deck  itself  out  as  it  pleases,  on 
the  spot  and  for  the  occasion.  It  is  the  pageant  of  an  hour. 
But  to  stretch  out  its  arm  fifteen  hundred  miles,  to  create  a 
voice  in  the  wilderness,  to  have  left  its  monuments  standing 
by  the  Teviot-side,  or  to  send  the  midnight  hymn  through 
the  shades  of  Vallombrosa,  or  to  make  it  echo  among  Alpine 
solitudes,  that  is  faith,  and  that  is  power.  The  rest  is  a 
puppet-show !  I  am  no  admirer  of  Pontificals,  but  I  am 
a  slave  to  the  picturesque.  The  priests  talking  together  in 
St.  Peter's,  or  the  common  people  kneeling  at  the  altars, 
make  groups  that  shame  all  art.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
city  have  something  French  about  them  —  something  of  the 
cook's  and  the  milliner's  shop,  something  pert,  gross,  and 
cunning ;  but  the  Koman  peasants  redeem  the  credit  of  their 
golden  sky.  The  young  women  that  come  here  from  Gensano 
and  Albano,  and  that  are  known  by  their  scarlet  bodices 
and  white  head-dresses  and  handsome  good-humoured  faces, 
are  the  finest  specimens  I  have  ever  seen  of  human  nature. 
They  are  like  creatures  that  have  breathed  the  air  of  heaven 
till  the  sun  has  ripened  them  into  perfect  beauty,  health,  and 
goodness.  They  are  universally  admired  in  Rome.  The 
Englishwomen  that  you  see,  though  pretty,  are  pieces  of 
dough  to  them.  Little  troops  and  whole  families,  men, 
women,  and  children,  from  the  Campagna  and  neighbouring 
districts  of  Rome,  throng  the  streets  during  Easter  and 
Lent,  who  come  to  visit  the  shrine  of  some  favourite  saint, 
repeating  their  Aves  aloud,  and  telling  their  beads  with  all 
the  earnestness  imaginable.  Popery  is  no  farce  to  them. 
They  surely  think  St.  Peter's  is  the  way  to  heaven.  You 
even  see  priests  counting  their  beads  and  looking  grave.  If 
they  can  contrive  to  get  possession  of  this  world  for  them- 
selves, and  give  the  laity  the  reversion  of  the  next,  were  it 


ix.]  TRAVELS  191 

only  in  imagination,  something  is  to  be  said  for  the  exchange. 
I  only  hate  half-way  houses  in  religion  or  politics,  that  take 
from  us  all  the  benefits  of  ignorance  and  superstition,  and 
give  us  none  of  the  advantages  of  liberty  or  philosophy  in 
return." 

He  was  greatly  irritated  by  the  Stuart  monument 
in  St.  Peter's.  He  was  persuaded  it  never  could  have 
been  put  up  without  the  consent  of  the  Hanoverian 
dynasty,  and  that  men  who  derived  their  title  under 
the  Act  of  Settlement  should  recognise  Legitimacy 
was  more  than  he  could  bear.  "Is  the  dread  of 
usurpation  become  so  strong  that  a  reigning  family 
are  half  ready  to  acknowledge  themselves  usurpers  in 
favour  of  those  who  are  not  likely  to  come  back  to 
assert  their  claim  ?  We  did  not  expel  the  slavish  and 
tyrannical  Stuarts  from  our  soil  to  send  a  whining 
and  Jesuitical  recantation  and  writ  of  error  after  them 
to  the  other  world  a  hundred  years  afterwards."  If 
Hazlitt  had  lived  to  read  Macaulay,  he  would  have 
greatly  rejoiced,  though  he  must  have  condemned  as 
a  momentary  lapse  the  touching  lines  of  the  historian 
on  the  Jacobite's  grave  in  Home,  save  so  far  indeed  as 
even  they  contain  some  privy  thrusts  at  the  "  slavish 
and  tyrannical  Stuarts." 

Hazlitt,  the  man  of  sentiment,  stands  nakedly  re- 
vealed in  the  comment  he  makes  upon  a  story  he 
repeats  from  M.  Beyle's  "  charming  little  book  entitled 
L' Amour."  The  story  is  that  of  the  Madonna  Pia 
referred  to  by  Dante  in  the  Fifth  Canto  of  the  Purga- 
torio,  and  the  comment  is  as  follows :  — 

"  This  story  is  interesting  and  well  told.  One  such  inci- 
dent, or  one  page  in  Dante  or  in  Spenser,  is  worth  all  the 
route  between  this  and  Paris,  and  all  the  sights  in  all 


192  WILLIAM   IIAZLITT  [CHAP. 

the  post-roads  in  Europe.  0  Sienna !  If  I  felt  charmed 
with  thy  narrow,  tenantless  streets,  or  looked  delighted 
through  thy  arched  gateway  over  the  subjected  plain,  it  was 
that  some  recollections  of  Madonna  Pia  hung  upon  the  beat- 
ings of  my  spirit,  and  converted  a  barren  waste  into  the 
regions  of  romance  ! " 

The  "  Tour  "  concludes  in  a  passage  so  much  in  the 
very  style  of  Mr.  Froude  as  to  make  a  sensitive  reader 
start  and  rub  his  eyes,  which  wander  to  where,  in 
their  places,  stand  the  Short  Studies :  — 

"I  confess  London  looked  to  me  on  my  return  like  a 
long,  straggling,  dirty  country  town;  nor  do  the  names 
of  Liverpool,  Manchester,  Birmingham,  Leeds,  or  Coventry 
sound  like  a  trumpet  in  the  ears,  or  invite  our  pilgrim  steps 
like  those  of  Sienna,  of  Cortona,  Perugia,  Arezzo,  Pisa,  and 
Ferrara.  I  am  not  sorry,  however,  that  I  have  got  back. 
There  is  an  old  saying,  Home  is  home,  be  it  never  so  homely. 
However  delightful  or  striking  the  objects  may  be  abroad, 
they  do  not  take  the  same  hold  of  you,  nor  can  you  identify 
yourself  with  them  as  at  home.  Not  only  is  the  language 
an  insuperable  obstacle,  other  things  as  well  as  men  speak  a 
language  new  and  strange  to  you.  You  live  comparatively 
in  a  dream,  though  a  brilliant  and  a  waking  one.  It  is  in 
vain  to  urge  that  you  learn  the  language;  that  you  are 
familiarised  with  manners  and  scenery.  No  other  language 
can  ever  become  our  mother-tongue.  We  may  learn  the 
words ;  but  they  do  not  convey  the  same  feelings,  nor  is 
it  possible  they  should  do  so,  unless  we  could  begin  our 
lives  over  again,  and  divide  our  conscious  being  into  two 
different  selves.  Not  only  can  we  not  attach  the  same 
meaning  to  words,  but  we  cannot  see  objects  with  the  same 
eyes,  or  form  new  loves  and  friendships  after  a  certain  period 
of  our  lives.  The  pictures  that  most  delighted  me  in  Italy 
were  those  I  had  before  seen  in  the  Louvre  'with  eyes  of 
youth.'  I  could  revive  this  feeling  of  enthusiasm,  but  not 
transfer  it.  Neither  would  I  recommend  the  going  abroad 


ix.]  TRAVELS  193 

when  young  to  become  a  mongrel  being  —  half  French,  half 
English.  It  is  better  to  be  something  than  nothing.  It  is 
well  to  see  foreign  countries  to  enlarge  one's  speculative 
knowledge  and  dispel  false  prejudices  and  libellous  views 
of  human  nature;  but  our  affections  must  settle  at  home. 
Besides,  though  a  dream,  it  is  a  splendid  one.  It  is  fine  to 
see  the  white  Alps  rise  in  the  horizon  of  fancy  at  the 
distance  of  a  thousand  miles ;  or  the  imagination  may  wing 
its  thoughtful  flight  among  the  castellated  Apennines,  roam- 
ing from  city  to  city  over  cypress  and  olive  grove,  viewing 
the  inhabitants  as  they  crawl  about  mouldering  palaces  or 
temples,  which  no  hand  has  touched  for  the  last  three 
hundred  years,  and  see  the  genius  of  Italy  brooding  over 
the  remains  of  virtue,  glory,  and  liberty,  with  Despair  at 
the  gates,  an  English  minister  handing  the  keys  to  a  foreign 
despot,  and  stupid  members  of  Parliament  wondering  what 
is  the  matter !  " 

Whilst  in  Florence,  Hazlitt,  attired  in  a  dress-coat 
and  nankeen  trousers  half-way  up  his  legs,  leaving  his 
stockings  well  visible  over  his  shoes,  presented  him- 
self at  the  Palazzo  Medici  and  demanded  to  see  Landor, 
an  act  of  courage  which  excited  the  admiration  and 
aroused  the  fears  of  the  English  residents.  The  two 
men  got  on  exceedingly  well.  Hazlitt  had  reviewed 
the  first  two  volumes  of  the  Imaginary  Conversations 
in  the  Edinburgh;  and  though  he  had,  with  all  the 
"  spectacled  gravity "  of  an  austere  critic,  found  his 
author  guilty  of  a  strange  lack  of  temper  and  decorum, 
and  full  of  arrogance  and  caprice,  he  had  also  greatly 
delighted  in  many  of  the  Conversations,  and  had  writ- 
ten of  them  with  feeling  and  enthusiasm.  Between 
Hazlitt  and  Landor  there  were  obvious  resemblances. 
Both  hated  kings  far  better  than  they  loved  peoples. 
Neither  of  them  was  the  least  a  democrat.  In  fact, 
the  anti-Gallican  phrensy  which  possessed  the  British 


194  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

nation,  and  had  so  disgusted  both  Landor  and  Hazlitt, 
though  Landor  learned  to  alter  his  mind,  was  what 
the  latter  had  once  called  it — "a  drunken  democracy." 
Popular  wars,  and  wars  usually  are  popular  to  begin 
with,  are  and  must  be  democratic  orgies.  Landor,  in 
a  letter  to  Parr,  once  opined  that  there  were,  perhaps, 
thirty  people  then  alive  in  the  world  to  whom  the 
word  vulgar  would  not  apply ;  and  as  for  the  public 
at  large,  why,  there  is  not,  wrote  Hazlitt,  "a  more 
mean,  stupid,  dastardly,  pitiful,  selfish,  spiteful,  envi- 
ous, ungrateful  animal  in  existence."  Both  men  had 
idolised  Napoleon,  who  was  referred  to  in  Landor's 
Gebir  (1798)  as 

"  A  mortal  man  beyond  all  mortal  praise." 

And  though  the  line  and  the  admiration  that  engen- 
dered it  were  both  to  disappear,  Landor  made  up  for 
his  recantation  by  continuing  to  abuse  all  English 
ministers  after  a  fashion  far  beyond  the  resources  of 
Hazlitt's  comparatively  mild  vocabulary.  Both  Haz- 
litt and  Landor  were  in  Paris  in  1802  —  the  one  as  a 
poor  artist,  and  the  other  as  a  man  of  fortune,  but  in 
very  much  the  same  temper  of  mind.  Both  men,  despite 
their  violent  self-will,  were  saner  politicians  than  were 
Southey  and  Wordsworth,  either  when  "  Society  was 
their  glittering  bride"  and  "airy  hopes  their  chil- 
dren"; or  when,  as  Mr.  Forster  tersely  puts  it,  they 
had  made  out  their  return  journey  from  Utopia  to 
Old  Sarum.  About  Southey,  whom  Landor  always 
loved,  they  might  have  quarrelled,  had  they  not  pre- 
ferred to  laugh,  as  also  they  might  over  Locke,  for 
whom  Landor  entertained  the  greatest  reverence.  As 
critics,  indeed,  it  would  be  hard  to  compare  them. 


ix.]  TRAVELS  195 

Landor  was  a  hundred  times  the  better  equipped  and 
caparisoned  —  a  high  priest  of  literature  in  costly 
vestments  —  whilst  Hazlitt  may  be  compared  to  a 
mendicant  friar  of  prodigious  eloquence,  preaching 
the  joys  of  good  books,  good  plays,  and  good 
pictures. 

The  conversation  between  Landor  and  Hazlitt  is 
partly  recorded  in  Landor's  Life  by  Mr.  Forster, 
vol.  ii.  p.  207.  It  took  an  odd  turn.  The  pair  parted 
in  amity  ;  and  Landor,  with  his  accustomed  profusion, 
paid  Hazlitt  some  very  high  compliments  in  the  new 
series  of  Imaginary  Conversations,  compliments  after- 
wards struck  out  under  the  influence  of  Southey  and 
Julius  Hare. 

The  "Tour"  ended  on  the  16th  of  October  1825, 
when  Hazlitt  and  his  son,  who  had  joined  his  father 
and  stepmother  somewhere  en  route,  returned  home 
by  way  of  St.  Omer  and  Calais.  Mrs.  Hazlitt  did  not 
come  home  with  her  husband,  on  whom  she  never  set 
eyes  again.  They  parted  peaceably ;  but  when,  after 
a  fortnight,  Hazlitt  wrote  to  her  in  Switzerland, 
inquiring  when  he  should  come  over  and  escort  her 
back,  she  gave  him  to  understand  she  was  never 
coming  back.  She  went  to  live  in  Scotland,  the 
country  to  which  she  belonged  by  descent,  and  where 
she  died  in  September  1869.  Hazlitt's  grandson 
thinks  that  his  father,  in  1825  a  manly  outspoken 
little  fellow,  who  took  his  mother's  part,  had  some- 
thing to  do  in  making  up  the  lady's  mind  to  proceed 
no  further  in  the  business.1  Fortunately  there  is 


1  The  lady  may  have  been  advised  that  her  marriage  was  biga- 
mous.   (See  note  on  p.  171.) 


196  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

nothing  written  on  either  side.  The  subject  was 
allowed  to  drop,  and  Hazlitt  after  his  return  home 
resumed  life  in  London  and  at  "  The  Hutt,"  Winters- 
low.  By  this  time  he  was  meditating  upon  a  Life 
of  Napoleon. 

During  the  last  few  months  of  the  "  Tour  "  there  had 
appeared  in  Colburn's  Magazine  —  the  new  monthly  — 
a  periodical  edited  at  different  times,  and  always  very 
badly,  by  Campbell,  Bulwer,  Hook,  and  Hood  —  a 
series  of  contemporary  portraits  called  The  Spirit  of 
the  Age,  which,  as  all  could  see,  though  no  name  was 
added,  were  from  the  pen  of  Hazlitt.  It  was  an 
alarming  prospect,  —  full  length  characters  or  word- 
portraits  of  Coleridge,  Southey,  Wordsworth,  Scott, 
Byron,  Gifford,  Bentham,  Malthus,  Campbell,  etc., 
with  descriptions  of  their  manners  and  customs  by 
the  biting  pen  of  Hazlitt,  —  who  would  not  feel  uneasy 
in  handling  such  a  volume  for  the  first  time  ?  Happily 
The  Spirit  of  the  Age,  Hazlitt's  best  book,  as  many 
think,  is  composed  in  a  spirit,  if  not  of  Christian  for- 
giveness, yet  of  a  mellowed  animosity.  Hazlitt  has 
not  changed  his  mind  or  swerved  an  inch  from  the 
straight  lines  of  his  sinewy  convictions  (the  expres- 
sion is  his  own),  but  his  temper  is  improved.  It  is 
only  necessary  to  compare  the  Southey  of  the  Political 
Essays  with  the  Southey  of  The  Spirit  of  the  Age  to 
observe  the  difference.  There  is  something  almost 
gracious  in  the  latter  essay,  and  the  same  holds  good 
with  regard  to  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth.  Hazlitt 
was  never  petty  and  personal  after  De  Quincey's 
fashion,  but  he  was  furious  and  reckless.  He  is  no 
longer  so  in  The  Spirit  of  the  Age.  He  was  as  much 
entitled  to  his  opinions  as  any  of  the  men  he  criticised 


ix.]  THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  AGE  197 

were  to  theirs.  There  was  no  earthly  reason  why  he 
should  crook  his  knee  to  any  of  them,  or  why  he 
should  abstain  from  unmasking  the  meanness  of  Gif- 
ford,  or  the  essential  intellectual  poverty  of  Brougham ; 
but  if  it  were  done,  it  were  well  'twere  done  good- 
humouredly.  To  call  The  Spirit  of  the  Age  a  good- 
humoured  book  would  be  extravagant,  but  it  is  not  a 
book  disfigured  by  passion  and  prejudice.  The  late 
Mr.  Gilfillan,  an  effusive  and  far  from  trustworthy 
critic,  but  who  yielded  to  none  in  his  hearty  enjoy- 
ment of  a  good  book,  used  a  happy  phrase  about  The 
Spirit  of  the  Age  when  he  called  it  the  "Harvest 
Home"  of  Hazlitt's  mind.  The  reader  of  Hazlitt's 
five-and-twenty  volumes  will  discern  most,  if  not  all, 
the  significant  thoughts  and  points  of  view  with  which 
his  reading  has  made  him  familiar,  shining  with  an 
undimmed  light,  and  stated  with  unabated  vigour  in 
TJie  Spirit  of  the  Age.  I  do  not  know  whether  the 
Hazlitt  beginner  should  begin  or  end  with  Tlie  Spirit 
of  the  Age;  there  is  much  to  be  said  on  both  sides; 
but  whether  he  begins  or  ends  with  it,  he  is  a  "  barren 
rascal"  indeed  if  he  does  not  enjoy  it. 

Two  quotations,  and  they  shall  be  good  long  ones, 
will  serve  to  illustrate  the  style  and  manner  of  these 
incomparable  sketches.  I  could  equally  well  choose 
two  others.  The  Home  Tooke,  for  example,  is  a 
superb  portrait  of  the  old  Erastian,  a  type  of  man 
well-nigh  extinct;  and  it  is  really  sad  to  think  our 
children  will  never  see  a  true  Erastian  in  the  flesh,  or 
chuckle  over  his  ingrained  toughness  of  moral  fibre. 
The  Cobbett  is  justly  admired,  and  is  as  fine  as  a 
portrait  by  Hogarth,  but  my  two  must  be  the  Cole- 
ridge and  the  Scott. 


198  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

This  is  the  Coleridge :  — 

"  'Let  us  draw  the  curtain,  and  unlock  the  shrine.' 
"  Learning  rocked  him  in  his  cradle,  and  while  yet  a  child 
'  He  lisped  in  numbers,  for  the  numbers  came.' 

At  sixteen  he  wrote  his  Ode  on  Chatterton,  and  he  still  reverts 
to  that  period  with  delight,  not  so  much  as  it  relates  to 
himself  (for  that  string  of  his  own  early  promise  of  fame 
rather  jars  than  otherwise),  but  as  exemplifying  the  youth  of 
a  poet.  Mr.  Coleridge  talks  of  himself  without  being  an 
egotist,  for  in  him  the  individual  is  always  merged  in  the 
abstract  and  general.  He  distinguished  himself  at  school  and 
at  the  university  by  his  knowledge  of  the  classics,  and  gained 
several  prizes  for  Greek  epigrams.  How  many  men  are  there 
(great  scholars,  celebrated  names  in  literature)  who,  having 
done  the  same  thing  in  their  youth,  have  no  other  idea  all  the 
rest  of  their  lives  but  of  this  achievement,  of  a  fellowship  and 
dinner,  and  who,  installed  in  academic  honours,  would  look 
down  on  the  author  as  a  mere  strolling  bard !  At  Christ's 
Hospital,  where  he  was  brought  up,  he  was  the  idol  of  those 
among  his  schoolfellows  who  mingled  with  their  bookish 
studies  the  music  of  thought  and  of  humanity;  and  he  was 
usually  attended  round  the  cloisters  by  a  group  of  these  (in- 
spiring and  inspired)  whose  hearts,  even  then,  burnt  within 
them  as  he  talked,  and  where  the  sounds  yet  linger  to  mock 
ELIA  on  his  way,  still  turning  pensive  to  the  past !  One  of 
the  finest  and  rarest  parts  of  Mr.  Coleridge's  conversation  is 
when  he  expatiates  on  the  Greek  tragedians  (not  that  he  is 
not  well  acquainted,  when  he  pleased,  with  the  epic  poets,  or 
the  philosophers,  or  orators,  or  historians  of  antiquity) ;  on  the 
subtle  reasonings  and  melting  pathos  of  Euripides ;  on  the 
harmonious  gracefulness  of  Sophocles,  turning  his  love- 
laboured  song,  like  sweetest  warblings  from  a  sacred  grove ; 
on  the  high-wrought  trumpet-tongued  eloquence  of  ^Eschylus, 
whose  Prometheus,  above  all,  is  like  an  Ode  to  Fate  and  a 
pleading  with  Providence,  his  thoughts  being  let  loose  as  his 


ix.]  THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  AGE  199 

body  is  chained  on  his  solitary  rock,  and  his  afflicted  will  (the 
emblem  of  mortality) 

4  Struggling  in  vain  with  ruthless  destiny.' 

As  the  impassioned  critic  speaks  and  rises  in  his  theme,  you 
would  think  you  heard  the  voice  of  the  Man  hated  by  the 
gods  contending  with  the  wild  winds  as  they  roar,  and  his 
eye  glitters  with  the  spirit  of  antiquity  ! 

"Next,  he  was  engaged  with  Hartley's  tribes  of  mind, 
'ethereal  braid,  though t-woven,"  and  he  busied  himself  for  a 
year  or  two  with  vibrations  and  vibratiuncles,  and  the  great 
law  of  association  that  binds  all  things  in  its  mystic  chain,  and 
the  doctrine  of  Necessity  (the  mild  teacher  of  Charity)  and 
the  Millennium,  anticipative  of  a  life  to  come,  and  he  plunged 
deep  into  the  controversy  on  matter  and  spirit ;  and,  as  an 
escape  from  Dr.  Priestley's  materialism,  where  he  felt  himself 
imprisoned  by  the  logician's  spell,  like  Ariel  in  the  cloven 
pine-tree,  he  became  suddenly  enamoured  of  Bishop  Berkeley's 
fairy-world,1  and  used  in  all  companies  to  build  the  universe, 
like  a  brave  poetical  fiction,  of  fine  words ;  and  he  was  deep 
read  in  Malebranche,  and  in  Cudworth's  Intellectual  System 
(a  huge  pile  of  learning,  unwieldly,  enormous),  and  in  Lord 
Brooke's  hieroglyphic  theories,  and  in  Bishop  Butler's  Sermons, 
and  in  the  Duchess  of  Newcastle's  fantastic  folios,  and  in 
Clarke  and  South  and  Tillotson,  and  all  the  fine  thinkers  and 
masculine  reasoners  of  that  age ;  and  Leibnitz's  Pre-established 
Harmony  reared  its  arch  above  his  head,  like  the  rainbow  in 
the  cloud,  covenanting  with  the  hopes  of  man ;  and  then  he 
fell  plump,  ten  thousand  fathoms  down  (but  his  wings  saved 
him  harmless),  into  the  hortus  siccus  of  Dissent,  where  he  pared 
religion  down  to  the  standard  of  reason,  and  stripped  faith  of 

1  Mr.  Coleridge  named  his  eldest  son  (the  writer  of  some  beautiful 
sonnets)  after  Hartley,  and  the  second  after  Berkeley.  The  third 
was  called  Derwent,  after  the  river  of  that  name.  Nothing  can  be 
more  characteristic  of  his  mind  than  this  circumstance.  All  his 
ideas  indeed  are  like  a  river,  flowing  on  for  ever,  and  still  murmur- 
ing as  it  flows,  discharging  its  waters,  and  still  replenished.  [Ilaz- 
litt's  own  note.] 


200  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

mystery,  and  preached  Christ  crucified  and  the  Unity  of  the 
Godhead,  and  so  dwelt  for  a  while  in  the  spirit  with  John 
Huss  and  Jerome  of  Prague  and  Socinus,  and  old  John  Zisca, 
and  ran  through  Neal's  History  of  the  Puritans,  and  Calamy's 
Nonconformists'  Memorial,  having  like  thoughts  and  passions 
with  them.  But  then  Spinoza  became  his  God,  and  he  took 
up  the  vast  chain  of  being  in  his  hand,  and  the  round  world 
became  the  centre  and  the  soul  of  all  things  in  some  shadowy 
sense,  forlorn  of  meaning,  and  around  him  he  beheld  the 
living  traces  and  the  sky-pointing  proportions  of  the  mighty 
Pan ;  but  poetiy  redeemed  him  from  his  spectral  philosophy, 
and  he  bathed  his  heart  in  beauty,  and  gazed  at  the  golden 
light  of  heaven,  and  drank  of  the  spirit  of  the  universe,  and 
wandered  at  eve  by  fairy  stream  or  fountain, 

' .  .  .  When  he  saw  nought  but  beauty, 
When  he  heard  the  voice  of  that  Almighty  One 
In  every  breeze  that  blew,  or  wave  that  murmured,' 

and  wedded  with  truth  in  Plato's  shade,  and  in  the  writings 
of  Proclus  and  Plotinus  saw  the  ideas  of  things  in  the  eternal 
mind,  and  unfolded  all  mysteries  with  the  Schoolmen,  and 
fathomed  the  depths  of  Duns  Scotus  and  Thomas  Aquinas, 
and  entered  the  third  heaven  with  Jacob  Behmen,  and  walked 
hand  in  hand  with  Swedenborg  through  the  pavilions  of  the 
New  Jerusalem,  and  sung  his  faith  in  the  promise  and  in  the 
word  in  his  Religious  Musings  ;  and  lowering  himself  from 
that  dizzy  height,  poised  himself  on  Milton's  wings,  and 
spread  out  his  thoughts  in  charity  with  the  glad  prose  of 
Jeremy  Taylor,  and  wept  over  Bowles's  Sonnets,  and  studied 
Cowper's  blank  verse,  and  betook  himself  to  Thomson's  Castle 
of  Indolence,  and  sported  with  the  wits  of  Charles  the 
Second's  days  and  of  Queen  Anne,  and  relished  Swift's  style 
and  that  of  John  Bull  (Arbuthnot's  we  mean,  not  Mr. 
Croker's),  and  dallied  with  the  British  essayists  and  novelists, 
and  knew  all  qualities  of  more  modern  writers  with  a  learned 
spirit  —  Johnson,  and  Goldsmith,  and  Junius,  and  Burke, 
and  Godwin,  and  the  Sorrows  of  Werter,  and  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau,  and  Voltaire,  and  Marivaux,  and  Cre'billon,  and 


ix.]  THE  SPIRIT  OF  THE  AGE  201 

thousands  more  —  now  '  laughed  with  Rabelais  in  his  easy 
chair,'  or  pointed  to  Hogarth,  or  afterwards  dwelt  on  Claude's 
classic  scenes,  or  spoke  witli  rapture  of  Raphael,  and  com- 
pared the  women  at  Rome  to  figures  that  had  walked  out  of 
his  pictures,  or  visited  the  Oratory  of  Pisa,  and  described  the 
works  of  Giotto  and  Ghirlandajo  and  Massaccio,  and  gave 
the  moral  of  the  picture  of  the  '  Triumph  of  Death,'  where  the 
beggars  and  the  wretched  invoke  his  dreadful  dart,  but  the 
rich  and  mighty  of  the  earth  quail  and  shrink  before  it ;  and 
in  that  land  of  siren  sights  and  sounds  saw  a  dance  of  peasant 
girls,  and  was  charmed  with  lutes  and  gondolas,  or  wandered 
into  Germany  and  lost  himself  in  the  labyrinths  of  the  Hartz 
Forest  and  of  the  Kantean  philosophy,  and  among  the  cabal- 
istic names  of  Fichte  and  Schelling  and  Lessing,  and  God 
knows  who.  This  was  long  after,  but  all  the  former  while 
he  had  nerved  his  heart  and  filled  his  eyes  with  tears,  as  he 
hailed  the  rising  orb  of  liberty,  since  quenched  in  darkness 
and  in  blood,  and  had  kindled  his  affections  at  the  blaze  of 
the  French  Revolution,  and  sang  for  joy  when  the  towers  of 
the  Bastille  and  the  proud  places  of  the  insolent  and  the 
oppressor  fell,  and  would  have  floated  his  bark,  freighted 
with  fondest  fancies,  across  the  Atlantic  wave  with  Southey 
and  others  to  seek  for  peace  and  freedom  — 

'  In  Philharmonia's  undivided  dale  ! ' 

Alas !  '  Frailty,  thy  name  is  Genius  / '  What  is  become  of 
all  this  mighty  heap  of  hope,  of  thought,  of  learning,  and 
humanity?  It  has  ended  in  swallowing  doses  of  oblivion 
and  in  "writing  paragraphs  in  the  Courier.  Such  and  so  little 
is  the  mind  of  man  !  " — The  Spirit  of  the  Age,  "  Coleridge." 

Hazlitt's  feeling  for  Scott  is  a  crucial  example  of  his 
sanity  as  a  critic.  Scott's  politics  were  as  abhorrent  to 
him  as  his  to  Scott.  He  not  unnaturally,  however 
mistakenly,  thought  Scott  held  shares  in  the  "  Black- 
wood  Manufactory  of  Mischief."  Scott's  "  Charley 
over  the  Waterism,"  and  those  subtle  influences  of  his, 
which  are  supposed  by  some  thinkers  to  have  had 


202  WILLIAM   IIAZLITT  [CHAI-. 

tlieir  result  in  TJie  Christian  Year,  The  Heir  ofRedclyjfe, 
and  the  revival  of  the  old  nonjuring  view  of  the 
authority  of  the  Episcopal  Church,  were,  so  far  as 
Hazlitt  could  dimly  apprehend  them,  as  anger-pro- 
voking as  the  Stuart  monument  in  St.  Peter's.  But 
Scott's  genius  and  humanity  rode  roughshod  over  all 
Hazlitt's  prejudices  and  passions.  Even  in  the  year 
of  Waterloo,  which  practically  is  also  the  year  of 
Waverley,  Hazlitt  became  one  of  Sir  Walter's  men,  and 
to  this  day  he  remains  by  far  his  most  interesting 
critic.  Others,  Mr.  Ruskin,  for  example,  may  have 
uttered  an  occasional  criticism  going  deeper  into  the 
heart  of  things  than  Hazlitt's  exhilarating  approbation 
may  appear  to  do ;  but  I  doubt  whether  Scott  ever  had 
a  reader  with  a  finer  eye  for  his  best  points  or  a  truer 
apprehension  of  his  superb  excellence,  whilst  I  am 
certain  he  has  never  had  one  so  well  able  to  impart 
the  warmth  and  glow  of  pleasure  and  delight. 

It  would  be  a  blunder  to  regard  the  passage  I  am 
about  to  quote  as  a  mere  roll-call  of  names,  a  pedigree 
in  which  they  all  go  on  begetting  one  another  to  the 
end  of  the  chapter  —  it  is  a  passage  full  of  intimate 
knowledge  and  intense  joy,  and  every  adjective  is 
selected  with  the  finest  taste. 


"  There  is  (first  and  foremost,  because  the  earliest  of  our 
acquaintance)  the  Baron  of  Bradwardine,  stately,  kind-hearted, 
whimsical,  pedantic ;  and  Flora  Maclvor  (whom  even  we 
forgive  for  her  Jacobitism),  the  fierce  Vich  Ian  Vohr,  and 
Evan  Dhu,  constant  in  death,  and  Davie  Gallatly  roasting  his 
eggs  or  turning  his  rhymes  with  restless  volubility,  and  the 
two  staghounds  that  met  Waverley,  as  fine  as  ever  Titian 
painted,  or  Paul  Veronese ;  —  then  there  is  Old  Balfour  of 
Burley,  brandishing  his  sword  and  his  Bible  with  fire-eyed 


ix.]  THE  SPIRIT  OF   THE  AGE  203 

fury,  trying  a  fall  with  the  insolent,  gigantic  Bothwell  at  the 
Change  House,  and  vanquishing  him  at  the  noble  battle  of 
Loudon  Hill ;  there  is  Bothwell  himself,  drawn  to  the  life, 
proud,  cruel,  selfish,  profligate,  but  with  the  love  letters  of  the 
gentle  Alice  (written  thirty  years  before),  and  his  verses  to 
her  memory,  found  in  his  pocket  after  his  death  ;  in  the  same 
volume  of  Old  Mortality  is  that  lone  figure,  like  a  figure  in 
Scripture,  of  the  woman  sitting  on  the  stone  at  the  turning  to 
the  mountain,  to  warn  Burley  that  there  is  a  lion  in  his  path ; 
and  the  fawning  Claverhouse,  beautiful  as  a  panther,  smooth- 
looking,  blood-spotted;  and  the  fanatics,  Macbriar  and 
Mucklewrath,  crazed  with  zeal  and  sufferings ;  and  the  in- 
flexible Morton,  and  the  faithful  Edith,  who  refused  to  '  give 
her  hand  to  another  while  her  heart  was  with  her  lover  in  the 
deep  and  dead  sea.'  And  in  The  Heart  of  Midlothian  we 
have  Effie  Deans  (that  sweet,  faded  flower)  and  Jeanie,  her 
more  than  sister,  and  old  Davie  Deans,  the  patriarch  of  St. 
Leonard's  Crags,  and  Butler,  and  Dumbiedikes,  eloquent  in 
his  silence,  and  Mr.  Bartoline  Saddletree  and  his  prudent 
helpmate,  and  Porteous  swinging  in  the  wind,  and  Madge 
Wildfire,  full  of  finery  and  madness,  and  her  ghastly  mother. 
Again,  there  is  Meg  Merrilies,  standing  on  her  rock,  stretched 
on  her  bier  with  '  her  head  to  the  east,'  and  Dirk  Hatteraick 
(equal  to  Shakespeare's  Master  Barnardine),  and  Glossin,  the 
soul  of  an  attorney,  and  Dandie  Dinmont,  with  his  terrier 
pack  and  his  pony  Dumple,  and  the  fiery  Colonel  Mannering, 
and  the  modish  old  counsellor  Pleydell,  and  Dominie  Samp- 
son,1 and  Rob  Roy  (like  the  eagle  in  his  eyry),  and  Bailie 
Nicol  Jarvie,  and  the  inimitable  Major  Galbraith,  and  Rash- 
leigh  Osbaldistone,  and  Die  Vernon,  the  best  of  secret  keepers ; 
and  in  the  Antiquary,  the  ingenious  and  abstruse  Mr.  Jon- 
athan Oldbuck,  and  the  old  beadsman  Edie  Ochiltree,  and  that 
preternatural  figure  of  old  Edith  Elspeth,  a  living  shadow,  in 
whom  the  lamp  of  life  had  been  long  extinguished,  had  it  not 
been  fed  by  remorse  and  '  thick-coming '  recollections ;  and 
that  striking  picture  of  the  effects  of  feudal  tyranny  and 

1  Perhaps  the  finest  scene  in  all  these  novels  is  that  where  the 
Dominie  meets  his  pupil,  Miss  Lucy,  the  morning  after  her  brother's 
arrival.  [Hazlitt's  own  note,  and  a  very  fine  one.] 


204  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

fiendish  pride,  the  unhappy  Earl  of  Glenallan ;  and  the  Black 
Dwarf,  and  his  friend  Habbie  of  the  Heughfoot  (the  cheerful 
hunter),  and  his  cousin  Grace  Armstrong,  fresh  and  laughing 
like  the  morning ;  and  the  Children  of  the  Mist,  and  the 
baying  of  the  bloodhound  that  tracks  their  steps  at  a  dis- 
tance (the  hollow  echoes  are  in  our  ears  now),  and  Amy  and 
her  hapless  love,  and  the  villain  Varney,  and  the  deep  voice 
of  G-eorge  of  Douglas,  and  the  immovable  Balafre,  and  Mas- 
ter Oliver  the  Barber  in  Quentin  Durward,  and  the  quaint 
humour  of  the  Fortunes  of  Nigel,  and  the  comic  spirit  of 
Peveril  of  the  Peak,  and  the  fine  old  English  romance  of 
Ivanhoe.  What  a  list  of  names  !  What  a  host  of  associa- 
tions !  What  a  thing  is  human  life  !  What  a  power  is  that 
of  genius !  What  a  world  of  thought  and  feeling  is  thus 
rescued  from  oblivion  !  How  many  hours  of  heartfelt  satis- 
faction has  our  author  given  to  the  gay  and  thoughtless ! 
How  many  sad  hearts  has  he  soothed  in  pain  and  solitude ! 
It  is  no  wonder  that  the  public  repay  with  lengthened  applause 
and  gratitude  the  pleasure  they  receive.  He  writes  as  fast  as 
they  can  read,  and  he  does  not  write  himself  down.  He  is 
always  in  the  public  eye,  and  we  do  not  tire  of  him.  His 
worst  is  better  than  any  other  person's  best.  His  back- 
grounds (and  his  later  works  are  little  else  but  backgrounds 
capitally  made  out)  are  more  attractive  than  the  principal 
figures  and  most  complicated  actions  of  other  writers.  His 
works  (taken  together)  are  almost  like  a  new  edition  of  human 
nature.  This  is  indeed  to  be  an  author  !  "  —  Spirit  of  the 
Age,  "  Sir  Walter  Scott." 

This  is  an  enthusiastic  passage,  and  requires  a  caveat 
to  be  entered.  Another  quotation  from  a  powerful 
essay  on  "  Scott,  Eacine,  and  Shakespeare,"  to  be  found 
in  the  Plain  Speaker,  will  serve  this  turn  :  — 

"  No  one  admires  or  delights  in  the  Scotch  Novels  more 
than  I  do ;  but,  at  the  same  time,  when  I  hear  it  asserted 
that  his  mind  is  of  the  same  class  with  Shakespeare's,  or 
that  he  imitates  nature  in  the  same  way,  I  confess  I  cannot 
assent  to  it.  No  two  things  appear  to  me  more  different. 


ix.]  THE  SPIRIT  OF   THE  AGE  205 

Sir  Walter  is  an  imitator  of  nature,  and  nothing  more ;  but 
I  think  Shakespeare  is  infinitely  more  than  this.  The  crea- 
tive principle  is  everywhere  restless  and  redundant  in  Shake- 
speare, both  as  it  relates  to  the  invention  of  feeling  and 
imagery ;  in  the  author  of  Waverley  it  lies  for  the  most  part 
dormant,  sluggish,  and  unused.  Sir  Walter's  mind  is  full  of 
information,  but  the  '  o'er  informing  power '  is  not  there. 
Shakespeare's  spirit,  like  fire,  shines  through  him  ;  Sir  Wal- 
ter's, like  a  stream,  reflects  surrounding  objects.  It  is  true, 
he  has  shifted  the  scene  from  Scotland  into  England  and 
France,  and  the  manners  and  characters  are  strikingly 
English  and  French  ;  but  this  does  not  prove  that  they  are 
not  local,  and  that  they  are  not  borrowed,  as  well  as  the 
scenery  and  costume,  from  comparatively  obvious  and  me- 
chanical sources.  Nobody  from  reading  Shakespeare  would 
know  (except  from  the  Dramatis  Personce)  that  Lear  was 
an  English  king.  He  is  merely  a  king  and  a  father.  The 
ground  is  common  j  but  what  a  well  of  tears  has  he  dug  out 
of  it !  The  tradition  is  nothing,  or  a  foolish  one.  There  are 
no  data  in  history  to  go  upon  ;  no  advantage  is  taken  of 
costume,  no  acquaintance  with  geography,  or  architecture,  or 
dialect  is  necessaiy ;  but  there  is  an  old  tradition,  human 
nature — an  old  temple,  the  human  mind  —  and  Shakespeare 
walks  into  it  and  looks  about  him  with  a  lordly  eye,  and 
seizes  on  the  sacred  spoils  as  his  own.  The  story  is  a  thou- 
sand or  two  years  old,  and  yet  the  tragedy  has  no  smack  of 
antiquarianism  in  it.  I  should  like  very  well  to  see  Sir 
Walter  giving  us  a  tragedy  of  this  kind,  a  huge  '  globose '  of 
sorrow,  swinging  round  in  mid-air,  independent  of  time,  place, 
and  circumstance,  sustained  by  its  own  weight  and  motion, 
and  not  propped  up  by  the  levers  of  custom,  or  patched  up 
with  quaint,  old-fashioned  dresses,  or  set  off  by  grotesque 
backgrounds  or  rusty  armour,  but  in  which  the  mere  para- 
phernalia and  accessories  were  left  out  of  the  question,  and 
nothing  but  the  soul  of  passion  and  the  pith  of  imagination 
was  to  be  found.  '  A  dukedom  to  a  beggarly  denier,'  he 
would  make  nothing  of  it.  Does  this  prove  he  has  done 
nothing,  or  that  he  has  not  done  the  greatest  things  ?  No, 
but  that  he  is  not  like  Shakespeare." 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   END    OF    STRIFE 

THE  first  time  the  Life  of  Napoleon  is  heard  of  is  from 
Captain  Medwin,  often  called  the  friend  of  Byron,  and 
a  man  given  to  printing  in  the  magazines  conversations 
he  reported  himself  to  have  had  with  well-known 
persons  he  encountered  by  the  way.  Hazlitt  had 
lingered  some  time  at  Vevey,  where,  sitting  though 
he  was  in  the  open  air,  Clarens  on  his  left,  behind 
him 

"  The  cone  of  Jaman  pale  and  grey," 

the  rocks  of  Meillerie  opposite,  white  and  purple 
flowers  at  his  feet,  he  wrote  a  downright,  honest, 
John  Bullish  essay  called  "  Merry  England,"  in  which 
he  extols  fox-hunting,  and  declares  that  the  coloured 
prints  and  pictures  depicting  the  chase  in  all  its  hu- 
mours and  incidents,  to  be  seen  hanging  up  in  old  halls 
and  ale-houses,  "have  more  life  and  health  and  spirit 
in  them,  and  mark  the  pith  and  nerve  of  the  national 
character  more  creditably  than  the  mawkish,  senti- 
mental, affected  designs  of  Theseus  and  Pirithous,  and 
jEneas  and  Dido,  pasted  on  foreign  salons  &  manger  and 
the  interior  of  country  houses  " ;  and  at  Vevey  it  was 
he  met  Captain  Medwin. 

What  Hazlitt  said  to  Medwin  was  this:  "I  will 
'  206 


CHAP,  x.]  THE  END  OF   STRIFE  207 

write  a  Life  of  Napoleon,  though  it  is  yet  too  early ; 
some  have  a  film  before  their  eyes,  some  want  magni- 
fying-glasses,  none  see  him  as  he  is  in  true  propor- 
tions." Hazlitt  kept  his  word  and  wrote  a  Life  of 
Napoleon  in  four  stout  volumes. 

The  public  is  certainly  ungrateful,  even  if  it  does 
not  deserve  all  the  other  epithets  Hazlitt  heaped  upon 
it.  It  clamours  for  big  books  from  those  who  write 
small  ones,  and  seldom  fails  to  point  out  to  the  author 
of  a  big  book  how  much  wiser  he  would  have  been  had 
he  written  a  small  one.  Even  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  con- 
cludes an  essay  on  Hazlitt  (in  whom  he  delights)  by 
expressing  a  regret  that  so  vigorous  a  writer  has  not 
left  some  more  enduring  monument  of  his  remarkable 
powers.  Hazlitt  worked  his  hardest  to  build  a  monu- 
ment, and  it  is  not  his  fault  that  his  Life  of  Napoleon 
has  not  endured.  How  could  he,  out  of  the  materials 
to  his  hand,  write  a  Life  of  Napoleon  in  four  volumes 
it  would  be  worth  anybody's  while  to  read  to-day? 
The  thing  was  not  to  be  done  in  1826  either  by  Scott 
or  Hazlitt.  Big  books  seldom  live  long,  and  the  im- 
portance attached  to  them  is  misleading.  Histories 
and  philosophies  stand  a  poor  chance  with  Barbara  S., 
the  Confessions  of  an  Opium  Eater,  and  a  description 
of  John  Cavanagh  playing  fives.  Had  Charles  Lamb 
written  a  History  of  the  Elizabethan  Drama  instead  of 
the  Essays  of  Elia,  De  Quincey  the  Principles  of  Politi- 
cal Economy,  and  no  Autobiographical  Sketches,  and 
Hazlitt  nothing  but  the  Life  of  Napoleon,  how  many 
people  to-day  would  know  more  than  the  sound  of  their 
names  —  if  indeed  so  much  as  that  ?  In  literature 
nothing  counts  but  genius;  and  between  a  work  of 
genius  however  small  and  a  task  of  utility  however 


208  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

long,  there  is  a  greater  gulf  fixed  than  there  is  between 
Dream  Children  and  the  Faerie  Queen. 

Hazlitt  on  his  return  to  England  divided  his  time 
between  Winterslow  and  his  lodging  in  London,  which 
was  now  in  that  West  End  for  which  he  expressed  such 
admiration  —  first  in  Down  Street,  and  afterwards  at 
40  Half  Moon  Street.  He  had  to  work  hard  for  his 
living,  contributing  to  the  Edinburgh  Review  and  the 
New  Monthly,  the  Atlas,  the  Examiner,  the  Morning 
Chronicle,  and  the  London  Weekly  .Review.  His  average 
income,  his  son  says,  was  somewhere  about  £600  a 
year  ;  but  it  all  had  to  be  made  from  day  to  day. 

The  Plain  Speaker,  two  more  volumes  of  miscel- 
laneous essays,  contributed  to  the  London  Magazine 
and  other  papers,  appeared  in  1826.  What  was  said 
of  the  Table-Talk  volumes  may  with  equal  truth  be 
said  of  these.  If  they  are  not  the  very  perfection  of 
miscellaneous  writing,  they  come  very  near  it.  * 

I  have  already  quoted  a  passage  on  the  Orator, 
taken  from  the  essay  on  "  Writing  and  Speaking " 
which  appeared  in  the  Plain  Speaker,  and  I  will  now 
take  from  the  same  essay  the  companion-picture  of  the 
Writer :  — 

"  The  writer  must  be  original,  or  he  is  nothing.  He  is 
not  to  take  up  with  ready-made  goods ;  for  he  has  time 
allowed  him  to  create  his  own  materials,  to  make  novel  com- 

1  In  the  Plain  Speaker  are  to  be  found  the  essay  on  the  '  Spirit 
of  Obligations'  (which  Mr.  R.  L.  Stevenson,  for  some  unexplained 
reason,  found  epoch-making)  ;  the  essay  on  '  Egotism,'  full  of  the 
finest  criticism ;  the  essay  entitled  '  The  New  School  of  Reform,' 
an  eloquent  defence  of  Sentinientalism,  and  other  of  Hazlitt's  most 
famous  performances.  '  It  is  of  this  finer  essence  of  wisdom  and 
humanity,  "  ethereal  mould,  sky-tinctured,"  that  books  of  the 
better  sort  are  made.'  —  Essay  on  the  Conversation  of  Authors. 


x.]  THE  END  OF  STRIFE  209 

binations  of  thought  and  fancy,  to  contend  with  unforeseen 
difficulties  of  style  and  execution,  while  we  look  on  and  ad- 
mire the  growing  work  in  secret  and  at  leisure.  There  is  a 
degree  of  finishing  as  well  as  of  solid  strength  in  writing, 
which  is  not  to  be  got  at  every  day,  and  we  can  wait  for  per- 
fection. The  author  owes  a  debt  to  truth  and  nature  which 
he  cannot  satisfy  at  sight,  but  he  has  pawned  his  head  on 
redeeming  it.  It  is  not  a  string  of  clap-traps  to  answer  a 
temporary  or  party  purpose  —  violent,  vulgar,  and  illiberal  — 
but  general  and  lasting  truth  that  we  require  at  his  hands. 
We  go  to  him  as  pupils,  not  as  partisans.  We  have  a  right 
to  expect  from  him  profounder  views  of  things ;  finer  obser- 
vations ;  more  ingenious  illustrations ;  happier  and  bolder 
expressions.  He  is  to  give  the  choice  and  picked  results  of 
a  whole  life  of  study,  what  he  has  struck  out  in  his  most 
felicitous  moods,  has  treasured  up  with  most  pride,  has  laboured 
to  bring  to  light  with  most  anxiety  and  confidence  of  success. 
He  may  turn  a  period  in  his  head  fifty  different  ways,  so 
that  it  comes  out  smooth  and  round  at  last.  He  may  have 
caught  a  glance  of  a  simile,  and  it  may  have  vanished  again  ; 
let  him  be  on  the  watch  for  it,  as  the  idle  boy  watches  for 
the  lurking-place  of  the  adder.  We  can  wait.  He  is  not 
satisfied  with  a  reason  he  has  offered  for  something ;  let  him 
wait  till  he  finds  a  better  reason.  There  is  some  word,  some 
phrase,  some  idiom  that  expresses  a  particular  idea  better 
than  any  other,  but  he  cannot  for  the  life  of  him  recollect  it : 
let  him  wait  till  he  does.  Is  it  strange  that  among  twenty 
thousand  words  in  the  English  language,  the  one  of  all 
others  that  he  most  needs  should  have  escaped  him  ?  There 
are  more  things  in  nature  than  there  are  words  in  the  Eng- 
lish language,  and  he  must  not  expect  to  lay  rash  hands  on 
them  all  at  once. 

'  Learn  to  write  slow  ;  all  other  graces 
Will  follow  in  their  proper  places.' 

"  You  allow  a  writer  a  year  to  think  of  a  subject ;  he 
should  not  put  you  off  with  a  truism  at  last.  You  allow 
him  a  year  more  to  find  out  words  for  his  thoughts ;  he 
should  not  give  us  an  echo  of  all  the  fine  things  that  have 
been  said  a  hundred  times." 


210  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

What  are  called  Hazlitt's  Select  Poets  is  a  compilation 
made  whilst  Hazlitt  was  abroad,  it  is  commonly  sup- 
posed by  Procter,  aided  by  Lamb,  and  it  may  be  one 
or  two  others,  who  worked  upon  a  copy  of  Chalmers's 
Poets  belonging  to,  or  at  all  events  borrowed  from, 
Leigh  Hunt,  who  had  good  reason  to  complain  of  the 
state  the  volumes  were  in  when  the  anthologists  had 
completed  their  task  of  selection.  I  too  have  seen 
anthologists  at  work.  Wordsworth's  lines  on  "  Nut- 
ting "  feebly  convey  their  method.  The  original  plan 
of  the  selection  included  Living  Poets,  and  one  copy  at 
least  so  complete  got  into  circulation,  but  the  liv- 
ing poets  or  their  publishers  foolishly  objected,  and  the 
edition  was  rigorously  suppressed,  and  the  volume 
now  to  be  seen  on  the  bookstalls  contains  only  poets 
who  were  "  in  their  misery  dead  "  in  1825. 

The  notes  are  marvels  of  terseness,  and,  I  should 
judge,  Hazlitt's  own.  An  example  or  two  may  be 
given  :  — 

"  MAKVELL  is  a  writer  almost  forgotten,  but  undeservedly 
so.  His  poetical  reputation  seems  to  have  sunk  with  his 
political  party.  His  satires  were  coarse,  quaint,  and  virulent ; 
but  his  other  productions  are  full  of  a  lively,  tender,  and 
elegant  fancy.  His  verses  leave  an  echo  on  the  ear  and 
find  one  in  the  heart.  See  those  entitled  '  Bermudas,'  '  To  his 
Coy  Mistress,'  '  On  the  Death  of  a  Fawn,' "  etc. 

"  DRYDEN  stands  nearly  at  the  head  of  the  second  class 
of  English  poets,  viz.  the  artificial,  or  those  who  describe 
the  mixed  modes  of  artificial  life  and  convey  general  precepts 
and  abstract  ideas.  He  had  invention  in  the  plan  of  his 
Satires,  very  little  fancy,  not  much  wit,  no  humour,  immense 
strength  of  character,  elegance,  masterly  ease,  indignant  con- 
tempt approaching  to  the  sublime,  not  a  particle  of  tender- 


x.]  THE  END   OF  STRIFE  211 

ness,  but  eloquent  declamation,  the  perfection  of  uncorrupted 
English  style,  and  of  sounding,  vehement,  varied  versification. 
The  Alexander's  Feast,  his  Fables,  and  Satires  are  his 
standard  and  lasting  works." 

"  COLLINS,  of  all  our  minor  poets,  that  is,  those  who  have 
attempted  only  short  pieces,  is  probably  the  one  who  has 
shown  the  most  of  the  highest  qualities  of  poetry,  and  who 
excites  the  most  intense  interest  in  the  bosom  of  the  reader. 
He  soars  into  the  regions  of  imagination,  and  occupies  the 
highest  peaks  of  Parnassus.  His  fancy  is  glowing,  vivid, 
but  at  the  same  time  hasty  and  obscure.  Gray's  sublimity 
was  borrowed  and  mechanical  compared  to  Collins's,  who  has 
the  true  inspiration,  the  vivida  vis  of  the  poet.  He  heats 
and  melts  objects  in  the  fervour  of  his  genius  as  in  a  furnace. 
See  his  Odes  'To  Fear,'  'On  the  Poetical  Character,'  and 
'  To  Evening.'  The  '  Ode  on  the  Passions '  is  the  most 
popular,  but  the  most  artificial  of  his  principal  ones.  His 
qualities  were  fancy,  sublimity  of  conception,  and  no  mean 
degree  of  pathos,  as  in  the  Eclogues  and  The  Dirge  in  Cym- 
beline" 

"  YOUNG  is  a  poet  who  has  been  much  overrated  from  the 
popularity  of  his  subject  and  the  glitter  and  lofty  pretensions 
of  his  style.  I  wished  to  have  made  more  extracts  from 
the  Night  Thoughts,  but  was  constantly  repelled  by  the 
tinsel  of  expression,  the  false  ornaments,  and  laboured  con- 
ceits. Of  all  writers  who  have  gained  a  great  name,  he  is 
the  most  meretricious  and  objectionable.  His  is  false  wit, 
false  fancy,  false  sublimity,  and  mock  tenderness.  At  least, 
it  appears  so  to  me." 1 

During  1826  and  1827,  whilst  the  Napoleon  was  in 
preparation,  and  getting  itself  written  chiefly  at 
Winterslow,  "Hazlitt  committed  his  last  indiscretion. 
He  began  publishing  in  the  New  Monthly  what  pur- 

1  "Hazlitt's  Poets  is  the  best  selection  I  have  ever  seen." — 
Edward  FitzOerald  (1832). 


212  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

ported  to  be,  and  partly  was,  the  record  of  conversa- 
tions between  old  James  Northcote,  then  about  eighty 
years  old,  and  himself.  The  articles  were  signed 
"  Boswell  Redivivus  " ;  and  contained,  as  they  natu- 
rally did,  whether  proceeding  from  Northcote's  lips  or 
Hazlitt's  pen,  many  free-spoken  remarks  about  other 
people.  They  excited  attention;  and  the  old  painter, 
who  was  really  much  pleased  with  the  interest  he  occa- 
sioned, pretended  to  be  furious,  and  the  editor  —  the 
poet  Campbell,  his  old  wound  still  smarting  —  declared 
himself  disgusted.  Northcote  had  his  remedy  —  to 
shut  his  door  in  Hazlitt's  face  and  let  the  world  know 
he  had  done  so  —  but  he  had  no  mind  to  do  this,  and 
Hazlitt  continued  to  publish  the  conversations,  which 
were  afterwards  printed  in  the  book  known  as  The 
Conversations  of  James  Northcote,  Esq.,  R.A.,  1830. 
Somebody  has  said  that  all  the  ill-nature  in  this  book 
is  Northcote's,  and  all,  or  almost  all,  the  talent  Hazlitt's. 
It  is  impossible  to  partition  it  on  any  such  principle. 
Both  Northcote  and  Hazlitt  were  well  supplied  with 
both  the  qualities  in  question.  It  is,  however,  obvious 
to  the  reader  who  knows  Hazlitt,  that  he  has  not  hesi- 
tated to  make  the  painter  say  what  either  Hazlitt  did 
actually  say  in  the  course  of  conversation,  or  what  he 
wrote  afterwards  out  of  his  own  head.  He  had  no 
scruples  in  such  matters.  For  Northcote,  however,  he 
had  a  genuine  respect  and  a  strange  kind  of  admira- 
tion. He  envied  him  the  head  upon  his  shoulders  and 
his  "  agreeable  old  age."  In  his  letter  to  his  son  "  On 
the  Conduct  of  Life,"  a  great  performance,  full  of 
wisdom  and  feeling,  Hazlitt  writes :  — 

"  Yet  if  I  were  to  name  one  pursuit  rather  than  another, 
I  should  wish  you  to  be  a  good  painter,  if  such  a  thing  could 


x]  THE   END  OF  STRIFE  213 

be  hoped.  I  have  failed  in  this  myself,  and  should  wish  you 
to  be  able  to  do  what  I  have  not  —  to  paint  like  Claude, 
or  Rembrandt,  or  Guido,  or  Vandyke,  if  it  were  possible. 
Artists,  I  think,  who  have  succeeded  in  their  chief  object  live 
to  be  old,  and  are  agreeable  old  men.  Their  minds  keep  alive 
to  the  last.  Cosway's  spirits  never  flagged  till  after  ninety ; 
and  Nollekens,  though  nearly  blind,  passed  all  his  mornings 
in  giving  directions  about  some  group  or  bust  in  his  workshop. 
You  have  seen  Mr.  Northcote,  that  delightful  specimen  of  the 
last  age.  With  what  avidity  he  takes  up  his  pencil,  or  lays 
it  down  again  to  talk  of  numberless  things  !  His  eye  has  not 
lost  its  lustre,  nor  '  paled  its  ineffectual  fire.'  His  body  is  a 
shadow ;  he  himself  is  a  pure  spirit.  There  is  a  kind  of 
immortality  about  this  sort  of  ideal  and  visionary  existence 
that  dallies  with  Fate  and  baffles  the  grim  monster  —  Death. 
If  I  thought  you  could  make  as  clever  an  artist  and  arrive 
at  such  an  agreeable  old  age  as  Mr.  Northcote,  I  should 
declare  at  once  for  your  devoting  yourself  to  this  enchanting 
profession ;  and  in  that  reliance,  should  feel  less  regret  at 
some  of  my  own  disappointments,  and  little  anxiety  on  your 
account ! " 

An  edition  of  the  Conversations,  with  critical  remarks 
upon  Hazlitt  as  a  judge  of  art  by  Mr.  Gosse,  has 
lately  appeared,  and  should  be  referred  to.  Although 
Hazlitt  shows  no  diminution  of  what  may  be  called 
his  literary  high  spirits,  he  was  now  in  bad  health, 
and  becoming  familiar  with  the  environment  of  the 
sick-chamber. 

By  the  end  of  1827  two  volumes  of  the  Napoleon 
were  ready  for  the  printers.  Messrs.  Hunt  and  Cow- 
den  Clarke  were  to  be  the  publishers ;  and  as  the  time 
approached  for  publication,  Hazlitt,  unaccustomed  as 
he  was  to  so  big  a  book,  grew  fidgety  and  nervous. 
The  passion  of  a  lifetime  was  involved.  It  cost  him 
nothing  to  discourse  about  poetry  and  the  drama,  or 
to  rhapsodise  about  Kousseau,  Mrs.  Siddons,  or  Titian 


214  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

—  such  writing  flowed  from  his  brain  —  it  was,  he  says, 
like  a  girl  copying  a  sampler,  but  Bonaparte  was 
another  matter.  He  well  knew  the  prejudice  he  had 
to  encounter,  and  he  must  have  known  how  ill  equipped 
he  was  to  encounter  it.  Scott's  Life  had  already  taken 
the  field  with  all  the  tclat  of  a  great  name  and  the 
weight  of  the  national  position  behind  it.  The  false 
Duessa  sat  enthroned —  how  could  he  hope  to  unmask 
her  horrors  to  the  world  ?  His  spirits  failed  him,  his 
heart  sank.  He  wrote  a  preface,  and  he  piqued  him- 
self upon  his  prefaces,  which  in  fact  were  essays,  and 
lent  themselves  to  the  style  he  had  mastered.  In  this 
preface  he  tells  us  why  he  wrote  the  book.  His  first 
object  was  to  make  it  plain  that  Bonaparte  stood 
alone  between  the  legitimate  kings  and  their  ancient 
prey  —  mankind.  As  for  Napoleon's  faults  —  great  as 
they  were  —  they  had  this  novelty  about  them,  that 
they  did  not  (so  Hazlitt  asserts)  proceed  upon  the 
principle  that  "  the  millions  were  made  for  one  " ;  and 
so  long  as  this  was  the  case,  why,  then,  he  cries 
triumphantly,  "liberty  was  saved  and  the  Revolution 
untouched."  Hofer  would  hardly  have  assented  to 
this  "  abstract  principle,"  but  there  is  now  no  need  to 
argue  the  point ;  and,  indeed,  just  now  Hofers  are  out 
of  fashion  in  an  age  which  demands  bigness  at  all  costs. 

"There  were,"  Hazlitt  proceeds  to  say  in  his  preface, 
"two  other  feelings  that  influenced  me  on  the  subject — a 
love  of  glory,  when  it  did  not  interfere  with  other  things, 
and  the  wish  to  see  personal  merit  prevail  over  external 
rank  and  circumstance.  I  felt  pride  (not  envy)  to  think 
that  there  was  one  reputation  in  modern  times  equal  to  the 
ancients,  and  at  seeing  one  man  greater  than  the  throne  he 
sat  upon." 


x.]  THE   END   OF  STRIFE  215 

This  is  not  Whig  doctrine,  and  indeed  is  quite  con- 
trary to  the  principles  of  1688. 

For  some  reasons  the  publishers  were  afraid  of  the 
preface,  and  it  was  for  a  while  kept  back.  One  of 
Hazlitt's  rare  letters  to  a  publisher  relates  to  the 
subject :  — 

"  DEAR  SIR,  —  I  thought  all  the  world  agreed  with  me 
at  present  that  Bonaparte  was  better  than  the  Bourbons, 
or  that  a  tyrant  was  better  than  tyranny.  In  my  opinion, 
no  one  of  an  understanding  above  the  rank  of  a  lady's 
waiting-maid  could  ever  have  doubted  this,  though  I  alone 
said  it  ten  years  ago.  It  might  be  impolicy  then  and  now 
for  what  I  know,  for  the  world  sticks  to  an  opinion  in 
appearance  long  after  they  have  given  it  up  in  reality.  I 
should  like  to  know  whether  the  preface  is  thought  impolitic 
by  some  one  who  agrees  with  me  in  the  main  point,  or  by 
some  one  who  differs  with  me  and  makes  this  excuse  not  to 
have  his  opinion  contradicted  ?  In  Paris  (jubes  regina 
renovare  dolorem)  the  preface  was  thought  a  masterpiece, 
the  best  and  only  possible  defence  of  Bonaparte,  and  quite 
new  there  I  It  would  be  an  impertinence  in  me  to  write  a 
Life  of  Bonaparte  after  Sir  W.1  without  some  such  object 
as  that  expressed  in  the  preface.  After  all,  I  do  not  care  a 
damn  about  the  preface.  It  will  get  me  on  four  pages  some- 
where else.  Shall  I  retract  my  opinion  altogether  and  fore- 
swear my  own  book  ?  The  remainder  of  vol.  ii.  will  be  ready 
to  go  on  with,  but  not  the  beginning  to  the  third.  The 
appendixes  had  better  be  at  the  end  of  second  vol.  Pray 
get  them  if  you  can :  you  have  my  Sieyes,  have  you  not  1 
One  of  them  is  there.  I  have  been  nearly  in  the  other 
world.  My  regret  was  to  'die  and  leave  the  world  "rough  " 
copy.'  Otherwise  I  had  thought  of  an  epitaph  and  a  good 
end  :  '  Hie  jaceiit  reliquiae  mortales  Gulielmi  Hazlitt,  auctoris 
non  intelligibilis :  natus  Maidstoniae  in  comi(ta)tu  Cantise, 
Apr.  10,  1778.  Obiit  Winterslowe,  Dec.  1827.'  I  think 

*  Sir  Walter  Scott. 


216  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

of  writing  an  epistle  to  C.  Lamb,  Esq.,  to  say  that  I  have 
passed  near  the  shadowy  world,  and  have  had  new  impres- 
sions of  the  vanity  of  this,  with  hopes  of  a  better.  Don't 
you  think  this  would  be  good  policy  ?  Don't  mention  it  to 
the.  severe  author  of  the  Press,  a  poem,1  but  methinks  the 
idea  arridet  Hone.  He  would  give  sixpence  to  see  me  float- 
ing upon  a  pair  of  borrowed  wings  half-way  between  heaven 
and  earth,  and  edifying  the  good  people  at  my  departure, 
whom  I  shall  only  scandalise  by  remaining.  At  present  my 
study  and  contemplation  is  the  leg  of  a  stewed  fowl.  I  have 
behaved  like  a  saint,  and  been  obedient  to  orders. 

"  Non  fit  pugil,  etc.  I  got  a  violent  spasm  by  walking 
fifteen  miles  in  the  mud,  and  getting  into  a  coach  with  an 
old  lady  who  would  have  the  window  open.  Delicacy, 
moderation,  complaisance,  the  suaviter  in  modo,  whisper 
it  about,  my  dear  Clarke,  these  are  my  faults,  and  have 
been  my  ruin.  —  Yours  ever,  W.  H. 

"December  7,  1827. 

"  I  can't  go  to  work  before  Sunday  or  Monday.     By  then 
the  doctor  says  he  shall  have  made  a  new  man  of  me. 
"  Pray  how's  your  sister  ? 
"  C.  COWDEN  CLAEKE,  Esq." 

The  first  two  volumes  appeared  in  1828,  and  at- 
tracted hardly  any  notice.  Mr.  Fonblanque,  a  com- 
petent and  independent  critic,  praised  the  book  very 
warmly  in  the  friendly  columns  of  the  Examiner;  but 
his  praise  could  not  compensate  either  for  the  general 
indifference  of  the  public  or  the  pecuniary  embarrass- 
ment of  the  publishers,  who  were  not  in  a  position  to 
pay  even  the  miserable  sum  Hazlitt  had  agreed  to  take 
as  the  price  of  his  labour. 

Stricken  in  health,  and  now  feeling  for  the  first 
time  the  actual  pinch  of  poverty,  Hazlitt  grimly  con- 

1  Mr.  M'Cleery  the  printer. 


x.]  THE  END   OF  STRIFE  217 

tinned  working  at  the  Life,  and  keeping  the  wolf 
from  the  door  by  writing  for  the  periodicals.  His 
London  lodgings  were  by  this  time  in  Bouverie  Street, 
and  here  he  wrote  for  the  Edinburgh  Review  two 
articles  —  one  on  Flaxman's  lectures  on  Sculpture,  the 
other  on  Wilson's  Life  of  De  Foe.  Lamb,  writing  to 
Wilson  in  November  1829,  refers  to  Hazlitt's  inten- 
tion, mournfully  adding,  "I  wish  I  had  health  and 
spirits  to  do  it."  Hazlitt  was  not  well  supplied  with 
either  commodity,  but  he  was  a  dauntless  fellow. 

The  two  concluding  volumes  of  the  Napoleon  were 
published  by  Effingham  Wilson  in  1830,  so  there  was 
an  end  of  that  job.  The  Life  excited  the  genuine 
admiration  of  so  good  a  judge  of  a  book  as  Talfourd, 
who  calls  it  a  splendid  work,  its  style  glowing  with 
the  fervour  of  battle  and  stiffening  with  the  spoils  of 
victory.  But  there  was  nothing  lasting  about  it ;  and 
the  passion  for  Bonaparte,  not  unpleasing  in  the 
essayist  and  sentimentalist,  becomes  rancid  in  the 
historian.  We  prefer  history  to  be  written  by  those 
who  know  —  if  they  feel  too,  so  much  the  better ;  but 
the  more  knowledge  they  have,  the  better  chance  they 
have  of  being  read. 

Hazlitt's  failure  was  no  greater  than  Scott's ;  and  of 
the  two  Lives,  Hazlitt's  is  by  far  the  more  spirited ; 
whilst  in  Fonblanque's  language  "  it  exhibits  a  deeper 
insight  into  the  sources  of  principles,  of  morals  and 
politics,  than  nine  out  of  ten  of  the  formal  treatises 
which  are  regarded  as  profound  authority."  The 
tameness  of  Scott's  Life  is  unbearable. 

One  quotation  from  Hazlitt's  Napoleon  will  show 
that  he  possessed  undeniable  qualifications  to  write 
about  the  Revolution:  — 


218  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

"  It  has  been  sometimes  pretended  as  if  the  French 
Revolution  burst  out  like  a  volcano,  without  any  previous 
warning,  only  to  alarm  and  destroy,  or  was  one  of  those 
comet-like  appearances,  the  approach  of  which  no  one  can 
tell  till  the  shock  and  conflagration  are  felt.  What  is  the 
realstate  of  the  case  ?  There  was  not  one  of  those  abuses 
and  grievances  which  the  rough  grasp  of  the  Revolution 
shook  to  air  that  had  not  been  the  butt  of  ridicule,  the 
theme  of  indignant  invective,  the  subject  of  serious  repro- 
bation for  near  a  century.  They  had  been  held  up  without 
ceasing  and  without  answer  to  the  derision  of  the  gay,  the 
scorn  of  the  wise,  the  sorrow  of  the  good.  The  most  witty, 
the  most  eloquent,  the  most  profound  writers  were  unani- 
mous in  their  wish  to  remove  or  reform  these  abuses,  and 
the  most  dispassionate  and  well-informed  part  of  the  com- 
munity joined  in  the  sentiment ;  it  was  only  the  self- 
interested  or  the  grossly  ignorant  who  obstinately  clung 
to  them.  Every  public  and  private  complaint  had  been 
subjected  to  the  touchstone  of  inquiry  and  argument ;  the 
page  of  history,  of  fiction,  of  the  drama,  of  philosophy  had 
been  laid  open,  and  their  contents  poured  into  the  public 
ear,  which  turned  away  disgusted  from  the  arts  of  sophistry 
or  the  menace  of  authority.  It  was  this  operation  of 
opinion,  enlarging  its  circle,  and  uniting  nearly  all  the 
talents,  the  patriotism,  and  the  independence  of  the  country 
in  its  service,  that  brought  about  the  events  which  fol- 
lowed. Nothing  else  did  or  could.  It  was  not  a  dearth 
of  provisions,  the  loss  of  the  queen's  jewels,  that  could  over- 
turn all  the  institutions  and  usages  of  a  great  kingdom ;  it 
was  not  the  Revolution  that  produced  the  change  in  the  face 
of  society,  but  the  change  in  the  texture  of  society  that  pro- 
duced the  Revolution,  and  brought  its  outward  appearance 
into  a  nearer  correspondence  with  its  inward  sentiments. 
There  is  no  other  way  of  accounting  for  so  great  and  sudden 
a  transition." 

The  completed  work  had  no  sale;  and  owing  to 
Hunt  and  Clarke's  failure  to  meet  their  obligations, 
brought  its  author  nothing.  He  was  to  have  had 


x.]  THE  END  OF   STRIFE  219 

£500;  he  got  a  bill  for  £140,  and  the  bill  was  waste- 
paper.  He  called  an  accountant  to  his  assistance,  and 
the  accountant  turned  out  to  be  a  rogue,  and  added 
to  his  embarrassments  and  misery.  Hazlitt  moved 
into  his  last  lodging,  No.  6  Frith  Street,  Soho,  at  the 
beginning  of  1830,  and  here  he  was  attacked  with  a 
gastric  inflammation. 

Mr.  Keynell  (whose  daughter  became  the  wife  of 
Hazlitt's  son,  now  nineteen  years  of  age)  came  to  see 
his  old  friend  after  the  Kevolution  in  France  of  July 
1830,  but  not  even  the  downfall  of  the  Bourbons  could 
raise  Hazlitt's  spirits.  "  I'm  afraid,  Charles,"  said  he, 
"  things  will  go  back  again."  There  is  no  peace  for 
the  politician  save  in  the  grave,  and  thitherward  Haz- 
litt was  now  fast  tending. 

On  his  hearing  that  his  son  was  likely  to  marry 
Miss  Keynell,  he  was  much  pleased,  and  in  June  1830 
we  find  Charles  Lamb  being  consulted  by  the  boy's 
mother  (who  was  at  Buxton  for  her  rheumatism)  as  to 
whether  Hazlitt  would  consent  to  his  son's  studying 
music,  as  he  had  a  fine  voice.  Lamb  saw  Hazlitt  on 
this  subject,  and  reports  that  he  expressed  "such 
horror  and  aversion  "  to  his  son's  singing  in  public 
that  Lamb  felt  he  could  not  meddle  further  in  the 
matter. 

Hazlitt  continued  writing  to  the  last,  and  did 
muster  up  spirit  to  compose  a  paper  on  the  depo- 
sition of  Charles  the  Tenth.  His  two  lasts  essays 
are  called  "The  Free  Admission"  and  "The  Sick 
Chamber." 

Through  the  months  of  August  and  September  he 
continued  the  struggle  with  Death.  He  longed  to  see 
his  mother,  and  begged  that  she  might  be  sent  for ;  but 


220  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

she  was  eighty-four  years  old,  down  in  Devonshire, 
and  could  not  come.  Procter  describes  him  in  dire 
straits.  His  mind  was  clear  and  strong.  He  died  on 
the  18th  of  September  1830.  His  last  words  were 
unexpected,  but  we  may  be  sure  sincere :  "  Well,  I've 
had  a  happy  life." 

Charles  Lamb,  Mr.  White,  Mr.  Hessey,  and  the 
younger  Hazlitt  were  in  the  room  when  he  died.  Mr. 
R.  H.  Home,  Mr.  Patinore,  Mr.  Basil  Montagu,  and 
Mr.  Wells,  the  author  of  Joseph  and  his  Brethren,  all 
seem  to  have  been  attentive  to  the  wants  of  the  dying 
man. 

Of  money  there  certainly  was  no  superfluity. 
Jeffrey,  hearing  of  his  old  contributor's  plight,  sent 
£50,  which  did  not  reach  the  house  till  Hazlitt  was 
dead;  but  though  his  circumstances  were  bad,  he 
was  not  in  want.  No  friend  of  Charles  Lamb's  ever 
was. 

"All  his  wants,"  so  wrote  his  son,  "were  care- 
fully studied,  and  at  the  time  of  his  death  he  was 
amply  provided  with  everything  which  could  be  re- 
quired." 

It  is  impossible  not  to  notice  that  this  is  a  guarded 
mode  of  expression. 

Dr.  Darling,  a  physician  well  known  in  connection 
with  the  class  of  complaint,  a  kind  of  cholera,  from 
which  Hazlitt  suffered,  attended  him  with  the  utmost 
assiduity;  and  if  there  were  those  among  the  laity 
who  conceived  him  to  misunderstand  the  case,  the 
circumstance  would  not  be  unusual. 

Hazlitt  was  buried  in  the  Churchyard  of  St.  Anne's, 
Soho,  and  here  admirers,  not  a  few,  have  sought  out 
his  grave,  and  spelt  through  the  terribly  long,  but  not 


x.]  THE  END  OF  STRIFE  221 

wholly  uncharacteristic,  epitaph  which  Mr.  R.  H. 
Home  was  allowed  to  inscribe  on  the  tombstone. 
This  epitaph,  which  may  still  be  read  in  the  Literary 
Remains,  is  no  longer  on  the  stone,  which  is  now 
removed  from  its  former  site,  and  bears  upon  its  face 
the  following  words :  — 

"  On  the  northern  side  of  this  ground  lie  the  remains  of 
William  Hazlitt,  Painter,  Critic,  Essayist. 

Born  at  Maidstone,  April  10,  1778. 
Died  in  Soho,  September  18,  1830. 
Restored  by  his  grandson. 
Feb.  1901." 

It  was  Hazlitt's  good  fortune  to  enjoy  the  friend- 
ship of  one  of  the  kindliest  of  his  contemporaries, 
Mr.  Serjeant,  afterwards  Mr.  Justice,  Talfourd.  There 
are  those  still  living,  and  among  them  Lord  James  of 
Hereford  and  Sir  Henry  Poland,  who  well  remember 
the  pleasant  and  miscellaneous  parties  that  used  to 
meet,  and  the  kindness  that  was  disseminated  under 
the  roof  of  this  hospitable,  delightful,  and  accom- 
plished man.  Talfourd's  "  Thoughts  upon  the  late 
William  Hazlitt,"  to  be  found  in  the  Literary  Remains, 
are,  and  will  probably  always  remain,  the  best  account 
of  the  difficult  personality  with  whom  they  were  con- 
cerned. They  should  be  read  in  their  proper  place 
and  in  their  entirety;  but  Talfourd's  description  of 
Hazlitt's  personal  appearance  must  be  given  :  — 

"  In  person,  Mr.  Hazlitt  was  of  the  middle  size,  with  a 
handsome  and  eager  countenance,  worn  by  sickness  and 
thought,  and  dark  hair,  which  had  curled  stiffly  over  the 
temples,  and  was  only  of  late  years  sprinkled  with  grey.  His 
gait  was  slouching  and  awkward,  and  his  dress  neglected ;  but 


222  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

when  he  began  to  talk,  he  could  not  be  mistaken  for  a  com- 
mon man.  In  the  company  of  persons  with  whom  he  was 
not  familiar  his  bashfulness  was  painful ;  but  when  he  became 
entirely  at  ease,  and  entered  on  a  favourite  topic,  no  one's 
conversation  was  ever  more  delightful.  He  did  not  talk  for 
effect,  to  dazzle,  or  surprise,  or  annoy,  but  with  the  most  simple 
and  honest  desire  to  make  his  view  of  the  subject  entirely 
apprehended  by  his  hearer.  There  was  sometimes  an  obvious 
struggle  to  do  this  to  his  own  satisfaction  ;  he  seemed  labouring 
to  bring  his  thought  to  light  from  its  deep  lurking-place ;  and, 
with  modest  distrust  of  that  power  of  expression  which  he 
had  found  so  late  in  life,  he  often  betrayed  a  fear  that  he 
had  failed  to  make  himself  understood,  and  recurred  to  the 
subject  again  and  again,  that  he  might  be  assured  he  had 
succeeded.  In  argument  he  was  candid  and  liberal ;  there 
was  nothing  about  him  pragmatical  or  exclusive ;  he  never 
drove  a  principle  to  its  utmost  possible  consequences,  but, 
like  Locksley,  'allowed  for  the  wind.'  For  some  years  pre- 
vious to  his  death  he  observed  an  entire  abstinence  from  fer- 
mented liquors,  which  he  had  once  quaffed  with  the  proper 
relish  he  had  for  all  the  good  things  of  this  life,  but  which 
he  courageously  resigned  when  he  found  the  indulgence  peril- 
ous to  his  health  and  faculties.  The  cheerfulness  with  which 
he  made  this  sacrifice  always  appeared  to  us  one  of  the  most 
amiable  traits  in  his  character.  He  had  no  censure  for  others 
who,  with  the  same  motive,  were  less  wise  or  less  resolute ; 
nor  did  he  think  he  had  earned,  by  his  own  constancy,  any 
right  to  intrude  advice  which  he  knew,  if  wanted,  must  be 
unavailing.  Nor  did  he  profess  to  be  a  convert  to  the  gen- 
eral system  of  abstinence  which  was  advocated  by  one  of  his 
kindest  and  staunchest  friends ;  he  avowed  that  he  yielded 
to  necessity ;  and  instead  of  avoiding  the  sight  of  that  which 
he  could  no  longer  taste,  he  was  seldom  so  happy  as  when 
he  sat  with  friends  at  their  wine,  participating  the  sociality 
of  the  time,  and  renewing  his  own  past  enjoyment  in  that  of 
his  companions,  without  regret  and  without  envy.  Like  Dr. 
Johnson,  he  made  himself  a  poor  amends  for  the  loss  of 
wine  by  drinking  tea,  not  so  largely,  indeed,  as  the  hero 
of  Boswell,  but  at  least  of  equal  potency,  for  he  might  have 


x.]  THE  END  OF  STRIFE  223 

challenged  Mrs.  Thrale  and  all  her  sex  to  make  stronger  tea 
than  his  own.  In  society,  as  in  politics,  he  was  no  flincher. 
He  loved  '  to  hear  the  chimes  at  midnight '  without  consider- 
ing them  as  a  summons  to  rise.  At  these  seasons,  when  in 
his  happiest  mood,  he  used  to  dwell  on  the  conversational 
powers  of  his  friends,  and  live  over  again  the  delightful  hours 
he  had  passed  with  them ;  repeat  the  pregnant  puns  that  one 
had  made ;  tell  over  again  a  story  with  which  another  had 
convulsed  the  room,  or  expand  in  the  eloquence  of  a  third ; 
always  best  pleased  when  he  could  detect  some  talent  which 
was  unregarded  by  the  world,  and  giving  alike,  to  the  cele- 
brated and  the  unknown,  due  honour." 

Mr.  Procter  speaks  of  Hazlitt's  quick,  restless,  grey 
eyes,  his  solitary  habits,  black  hair,  sprinkled  with 
grey,  slovenly  dress  at  home,  but  neat  when  he  went 
abroad,  his  mode  of  walking  loose  and  unsteady, 
although  his  arms  displayed  strength  when  playing 
rackets  with  Martin  Burney  and  others. 

Mr.  Patmore,  who  plays  a  dubious  part  in  Hazlitt's 
life,  is  more  lurid  than  the  amiable  Procter,  and  speaks 
of  "  fearful  indications  of  internal  passion  "  and  "  truly 
awful "  expressions  of  face  when  offended,  but  he  pro- 
ceeds :  — 

"  When  in  good  health,  and  in  a  tolerable  humour  with 
himself  and  the  world,  his  face  was  more  truly  and  entirely 
answerable  to  the  intellect  that  spoke  through  it  than  any 
other  I  ever  saw,  either  in  life  or  on  canvas ;  and  its  crowning 
portion,  the  brow  and  forehead,  was,  to  my  thinking,  quite 
unequalled  for  mingled  capacity  and  beauty.  .  .  .  The  mouth, 
from  its  ever-changing  form  and  character,  could  scarcely  be 
described,  except  as  to  its  astonishingly  varied  power  of 
expression,  which  was  equal  to,  and  greatly  resembled,  that 
of  Edmund  Kean.  ...  He  always  lived  (during  the  period 
of  my  intimacy  with  him)  in  furnished  lodgings.  ...  He 
usually  rose  at  from  one  to  two  o'clock  in  the  day,  scarcely 


224  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

ever  before  twelve ;  and  if  he  had  no  work  in  hand,  he  would 
sit  over  his  breakfast  (of  excessively  strong  black  tea  and 
a  toasted  French  roll)  till  four  or  five  in  the  afternoon  —  silent, 
motionless,  and  self-absorbed,  as  a  Turk  over  his  opium  pouch, 
for  tea  served  him  precisely  in  this  capacity.  It  was  the  only 
stimulant  he  ever  took,  and  at  the  same  time  the  only  luxury ; 
the  delicate  state  of  his  digestive  organs  prevented  him  from 
tasting  any  fermented  liquors,  or  touching  any  food  but  beef 
or  mutton,  or  poultry,  or  game.  ...  A  cup  of  his  tea  (if  you 
happened  to  come  in  for  the  first  brewage  of  it)  was  a  peculiar 
thing ;  I  have  never  tasted  anything  like  it.  He  always  made 
it  himself,  using  with  it  a  great  quantity  of  sugar  and  cream. 
To  judge  from  its  occasional  effects  upon  myself,  I  should  say 
that  the  quantity  he  drank  of  this  tea  produced  ultimately 
a  most  injurious  effect  upon  him.  .  .  .  His  breakfast  and  tea 
were  frequently  the  only  meals  that  he  took  till  late  at  night, 
when  he  usually  ate  a  hearty  supper  of  hot  meat.  This  he 
invariably  took  at  a  tavern."  —  Patmore's  Friends  and 
Acquaintances,  vol.  ii.  pp.  302-8. 

Hazlitt  was  accustomed,  says  his  grandson,  writing 
from  family  tradition,  "  to  speak  low  like  Coleridge, 
with  his  chin  bent  and  his  eyes  widely  expanded,  and 
his  voice  and  manner  as  a  rule  were  apt  to  communi- 
cate an  impression  of  querulousness,  and  the  tone  was 
of  a  person  who  related  a  succession  of  grievances." 
Like  Dr.  Johnson,  he  addressed  everybody,  even 
children,  as  "Sir." 

I  do  not  know  that  there  are  any  other  personal 
traits  to  be  recorded. 

Hazlitt's  mother,  Grace  Hazlitt,  died  in  June  1837, 
in  her  ninety -first  year.  Her  mother,  who  lived  till 
1801,  remembered  the  death  of  the  late  Protector, 
Richard  Cromwell,  and  was  eleven  years  old  when 
George  the  First  came  over  from  Hanover  to  be  our 
King.  Peggy  the  diarist  died  in  Liverpool  in  1844, 


x.]  THE  END  OF  STRIFE  225 

and  the  painter  John,  whose  fortunes  were  not  equal 
to  his  merits,  died  in  May  1837.  But  one  remark  of 
his  has  come  down  to  us,  though  his  miniatures  may 
still  be  seen  —  "No  young  man  thinks  he  shall  ever 
die." 


CHAPTER  XI 

CHARACTER   AND    GENIUS 

BOOKS  of  this  kind  usually  end  with  a  chapter  entitled 
as  above,  but  I  have  inscribed  the  word  Character  with 
trepidation.  About  Hazlitt's  genius  it  were  useless 
now  to  write ;  it  speaks  for  itself  in  many  a  glowing 
page  which  proclaim  him  a  great  miscellaneous  writer 
and  a  masterly  and  masterful  critic.  Of  this  critical 
aspect  of  Hazlitt,  differences  of  opinion  have  existed, 
and  will  continue  to  exist.  Landor,  for  example, 
writes:  "  Hazlitt's  books  are  delightful  to  read,  pleasant 
always,  often  elegant  and  affecting  in  the  extreme. 
But  I  don't  get  much  valuable  criticism  out  of  him." 
Heine,  on  the  other  hand,  pronounces  Hazlitt's  mind  to 
be  not  only  brilliant,  but  deep,  "  a  mixture  of  Diderot 
and  Borne."  On  this  matter  the  reader  can  and  will 
judge  for  himself;  he  is  hardly  likely  to  be  better 
qualified  to  form  an  opinion  than  Landor,  or  to  express 
it  than  Heine. 

But  his  character  ? 

Ben  Jonson  says  in  his  grave  way  that  the  main 
argument  of  character  is  a  good  life.  This  plenary 
argument  cannot  be  used  with  much  confidence  on 
Hazlitt's  behalf. 

In  his  sketch  of  Home  Tooke,  Hazlitt,  who  with  a 
pen  in  his  hand  could  be  austere  enough,  observes : 
"  Tooke's  mind  (so  to  speak)  had  no  religion  in  it,  and 
226 


CHAP,  xi.]         CHARACTER  AND   GENIUS  227 

very  little  of  the  '  moral  qualities  of  genius.'  "  The 
same  remark  cannot  be  made  of  Hazlitt,  who  hated  the 
materialism  of  the  Whiggish  and  Erastian  mind,  and 
always  thought  nobly  of  man  in  the  abstract,  however 
heartily  he  hated  Mr.  Pitt,  Lord  Castlereagh,  Lord 
Liverpool,  and  William  Gifford,  and  a  whole  host  of 
other  people.  Swift  has  told  us  that  he  hated  Man, 
but  loved  John,  Tom,  and  Dick ;  Hazlitt  was  disposed 
to  reverse  this  process.  But,  unlike  Tooke,  he  had  (I 
think)  religion  in  his  mind,  though  it  early  disappeared 
from  his  life. 

At  some  time  or  another  Hazlitt  got  athwart  the 
main  current  of  existence,  or  as  De  Quincey,  whose 
paper  on  Hazlitt  is  full  of  shrewdness,  puts  it,  "he 
wilfully  placed  himself  in  collision  with  all  the  interests 
that  were  in  the  sunshine  of  this  world,  and  with  all 
the  persons  that  were  then  powerful  in  England." 
Things  early  began  to  go  wrong  with  him,  and  people, 
he  knew  not  why,  to  eye  him  with  the  squint  of  sus- 
picion. What  had  he  done  to  be  so  hated  ?  He  had 
never  a  thought  of  personal  aggrandisement;  all  his 
thoughts  were  of  public  affairs.  A  life  freer  from 
greed  of  gain,  or  taint  of  literary  vanity,1  is  not  to  be 
found  in  the  records  of  English  literature.  But  he 
was  always  desperately  in  earnest ;  and  found  it  not 
only  hard,  but  plainly  impossible,  to  put  his  political 
and  philosophical  convictions  good-humouredly  aside 
on  occasions  and  be,  for  a  season,  all  things  to  all  men. 
He  could  not  do  it,  and  his  inability  to  do  it  made 
him  impatient  of  those  who  could  and  did.  Lamb's 

1  See  his  letter  to  Mr.  Napier,  dated  August  1818,  decliuing  an 
invitation  to  write  on  the  Drama  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 
—  Selection  from  the  Correspondence  of  Macvey  Napier,  p.  21. 


228  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

attitude  of  mind  puzzled  Hazlitt.  He  knew  Lamb  to 
be,  as  indeed  some  of  his  less  known  writings  show 
him  to  have  been,  a  sound  and  sane  politician,  with  a 
real  grip  of  situations ;  and  yet  he  was  content  not  only 
to  live  aloof  from  politics,  but  at  peace  with  men  who, 
despite  the  noisy  protestations  of  their  early  manhood, 
had  enrolled  themselves  in  the  great  Army  of  Reaction. 
This  puzzled  Hazlitt,  and  when  he  was  puzzled  he  grew 
angered,  for  his  was  a  brooding,  pondering  nature.  At 
the  bottom  of  his  mind  lay  a  deep,  gloomy  pool  of 
metaphysics,  and  into  this  pool  he  plunged  from  time 
to  time,  always  emerging  more  than  ever  in  love  with 
abstract  propositions  and  the  hard  core  of  thought. 
He  led  a  lonely  life,  thinking,  thinking,  thinking,  and 
the  more  he  thought  the  darker  grew  the  welkin. 

Like  the  former  tenant  of  19  York  Street,  Hazlitt 
became  more  and  more  a  detached  figure,  out  of  keep- 
ing with  his  times — a  republican  without  a  populace  — 
for  were  not  the  populace  on  the  other  side  ?  Often, 
I  doubt  not,  did  Hazlitt  mournfully  repeat  to  himself 
the  lines  dictated  by  Milton,  old  and  blind,  with 
Charles  Stuart  at  Whitehall  — 

"  And  what  the  people  but  a  herd  confused, 
A  miscellaneous  rabble  who  extol 

Things  vulgar,  and  well  weighed,  scarce  worth  the  praise  ? 
They  praise,  and  they  admire  they  know  not  what, 
And  know  not  whom,  but  as  one  leads  the  other." 

It  cannot  but  be  unfortunate  when  a  man  is  doomed 
to  select  for  his  hero  the  arch-enemy  of  his  country. 
It  is  wisest  to  hate  your  country's  enemies.  The 
Church  allows  it,  the  National  Anthem  demands  it, 
and  the  experience  of  mankind  approves  it.  Had 


xi.]  CHARACTER  AND   GENIUS  229 

Hazlitt  known  all  there  was  to  be  known  about  Bona- 
parte, he  probably  would  have  outlived  a  tragic  devo- 
tion about  which  there  was  nothing  undignified.  It 
was  no  vulgar  thing  he  extolled ;  for  to  Hazlitt,  as  to 
Heine,  Bonaparte  represented  the  lordship  of  brain 
and  the  divinity  of  brow  as  against  hereditary 
stupidity,  insolence,  and  ugliness.  It  was  a  terribly 
costly  delusion,  but  it  was  not  otherwise  than  a 
noble  one. 

Distracted  by  this  anti-national  passion,  Hazlitt 
became  only  too  good  a  hater,  and  hate  is  a  trouble- 
some thing. 

"It  rumples  sleep ; 
It  settles  on  the  dishes  of  the  feast ; 
It  bites  the  fruit,  it  dips  into  the  wine ; 
I'd  rather  let  my  enemy  hate  me 
Than  I  hate  him." 

Hazlitt  became  as  irritable  as  Kousseau ;  but  as  De 
Quincey  points  out,  in  the  paper  before  quoted,  Hazlitt 
viewed  the  personal  affronts  and  casual  slights  he 
fancied  himself  called  upon  to  endure,  not  as  being 
aimed  personally  at  him,  but  at  his  opinions.  "  It  was 
not  Hazlitt  whom  these  wretches  struck  at ;  no,  no ; 
it  was  democracy,  or  it  was  freedom,  or  it  was  Napoleon 
whose  shadow  they  saw  behind  Hazlitt,  and  Napoleon, 
not  for  anything  in  him  that  might  be  really  bad,  but 
in  revenge  of  that  consuming  wrath  against  the  thrones 
of  Christendom,  for  which  (said  Hazlitt)  let  us  glorify 
his  name  eternally." 

In  the  letters  of  Wordsworth  and  Southey  the 
amazed  reader  encounters  passions  and  prejudices  at 
least  as  furious  on  paper  as  those  which  devastated 


230  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

Hazlitt.  Southey's  violence  is  boundless.  In  one  of 
his  letters  he  declares  it  to  be  humiliating  that  Spain 
should  have  produced  two  centuries  ago  half-a-dozen 
men  resolute  in  a  mistaken  cause  to  slay  the  Prince  of 
Orange  at  the  sacrifice  of  their  own  lives,  "and  that 
now  she  has  not  found  one  to  aim  a  dagger  at  the  heart 
of  Bonaparte."  Wordsworth,  too,  had  his  disappoint- 
ments. The  Reform  Bill  preyed  upon  his  health.  The 
pious  Julius  Hare,  writing  to  Landor,  after  mentioning 
this  fact,  proceeds  to  say :  "  Everybody  said  he  seemed 
to  have  grown  ten  years  older  in  the  last  three  months. 
If  the  Bill  does  all  the  good  which  its  most  infatuated 
advocates  anticipate,  it  will  hardly  make  amends  for 
this  evil."  Ten  years  off  a  poet's  life  would  be  per- 
haps a  high  price  to  pay  even  for  a  bloodless  revolution, 
but  happily  the  country  was  not  called  upon  to  pay  it. 
Wordsworth  had  the  good  sense  to  get  quite  well  again, 
and  lived  far  beyond  the  Psalmist's  span.  Southey,  I 
am  sure,  never  really  intended  to  advocate  assassina- 
tion, and  was  soon  quite  respectably  employed  in 
compiling  his  Book  of  the  Church.  The  fever  in  Hazlitt's 
blood  was  not  so  easily  allayed ;  and  hence  it  is  that 
whilst  the  world  has  willingly  forgotten  Wordsworth's 
prejudices,  and  has  invested  the  poet's  figure  with 
.somewhat  of  the  same  dignity,  calm,  and  repose  as 
cling  to  the  famous  statue  of  the  seated  Menander  in 
the  Roman  gallery,  Hazlitt  still  figures  in  our  minds 
as  a  man  struggling  in  the  grasp  of  contending  passions 
and  lifelong  prejudices. 

There  are  incidents  in  Hazlitt's  life  which  are  un- 
pleasing  in  the  extreme.  We  are  told  by  Mr.  R.  L. 
Stevenson's  biographer  that  the  Liber  Amoris  is  believed 
to  have  deprived  the  world  of  a  Life  of  Hazlitt 


xi.]  CHARACTER    AND   GENIUS  231 

from  the  feeling  pen  of  "Tusitala."  The  loss  is  a 
heavy  one. 

It  is  perhaps  no  excuse  to  say,  yet  it  is  worth 
remembering,  that  Hazlitt  is  his  own  accuser.  Had  he 
not  turned  traitor  to  himself,  it  is  little  or  nothing  we 
should  have  been  able  to  urge  against  him  save  the 
holding  until  death  of  unpopular  opinions.  It  does 
not  follow  as  the  night  the  day  that  lives  were  wholly 
free  from  shameful  incidents  because,  as  recorded  by 
biographers,  those  who  led  them  are  made  to  appear  as 

"  Men  that  every  virtue  decks, 
And  women  models  of  their  sex, 
Society's  true  ornament." 

If  it  be  replied  that  Hazlitt's  lack  of  self-respect  adds 
to  his  offences,  a  question  is  raised,  I  do  not  intend  to 
pursue,  how  far  and  on  what  grounds  sinful  man  is 
entitled  to  respect  himself.  In  the  eyes  of  the  saints 
at  all  events,  the  most  repulsive  of  all  figures  is  that  of 
a  well-groomed  sinner,  polite,  reticent,  self-controlled^ 
self-contained,  and  brimful  of  "  self-respect,"  a  perfect 
piece  of  "  polished  ungodliness."  Hazlitt  at  least  was 
not  that.  His  own  hands  tore  down  the  veil  which  if 
left  alone  would  have  been  the  decent  shroud  of  those 
failings,  the  frank  revelation  of  which  deprived  him 
of  an  accomplished  biographer. 

As  against  this,  it  is  only  too  true  to  say  that  Hazlitt's 
confessions,  though  entirely  free  from  fanfaronnade, 
were  not  made  in  a  penitential  spirit,  and  display,  even 
in  their  original  published  form,  a  mixture  of  coarse- 
ness and  sentiment  not  a  little  disagreeable. 

So  far  as  the  book  Liber  Amoris  is  concerned,  it  was 
a  purely  literary  effort ;  an  attempt  to  describe  a  man's 


232  WILLIAM   HAZLITT  [CHAP. 

passion  for  a  stony-hearted  damsel.  It  was  perhaps 
worth  the  £100  John  Hunt  paid  for  it.  It  is  the 
facts  that  lie  behind  the  book  that  are  disagreeable, 
how  disagreeable  we  have  unfbrtunately  quite  recently 
been  allowed  to  discover. 

"  The  web  of  our  life  is  of  a  mingled  yarn,  good  and 
ill  together ;  our  virtues  would  be  proud  if  our  faults 
whipped  them  not;  and  our  crimes  would  despair  if 
they  were  not  cherished  by  our  virtues."  So  said 
Shakespeare,  in  a  passage  which,  though  it  does  not 
pretend  to  be  poetry,  is  sound  criticism  of  life.  It  was 
a  very  favourite  quotation  of  Hazlitt's,  who  had  no 
more  reason  to  be  proud  of  his  virtues  than  we  have 
the  right  to  despair  of  his  crimes. 

How  little  is  it  we  can  know  about  the  character  of 
a  dead  man  we  never  saw !  His  books,  if  he  wrote 
books,  will  tell  us  something ;  his  letters,  if  he  wrote 
any,  and  they  are  preserved,  may  perchance  fling  a 
shadow  on  the  sheet  for  a  moment  or  two ;  a  portrait 
if  painted  in  a  lucky  hour  may  lend  the  show  of  sub- 
stance to  our  dim  surmisings ;  the  things  he  did  must 
carefully  be  taken  into  account ;  but,  as  a  man  is  much 
more  than  the  mere  sum  of  his  actions,  even  these 
cannot  be  relied  upon  with  great  confidence. 

For  the  purpose  of  getting  at  any  one's  character,  the 
testimony  of  those  who  knew  the  living  man  in  the 
circumstances  best  calculated  to  reveal  him  as  he  truly 
was,  is  of  all  the  material  likely  to  be  within  our  reach 
the  most  useful ;  provided  always  it  is  supplied  by  per- 
sons with  sufficient  insight  into  character  to  be  able 
to  tell  the  truth,  and  provided  also  that  they  are  both 
permitted  to  tell  it,  and  willing  to  do  so.  These  pro- 
visos, or  some  or  one  of  them,  destroy  the  value  of 


xi.]  CHARACTER  AND   GENIUS  233 

the  greater  part  of  the  testimony  of  friends,  whilst 
that  of  enemies  requires  so  much  sifting  as  to  be 
practically  useless.1 

In  Hazlitt's  case  we  can  fortunately  call  a  witness 
of  the  deepest  insight  into  the  finest  shades  of  char- 
acter, and  of  unimpeachable  veracity;  one  who  was 
free  to  speak  or  to  be  silent  as  he  chose,  and  who 
knew  all,  or  very  nearly  all,  that  we  know  about 
Hazlitt,  and  a  vast  deal  that  we  shall  never  know. 
With  Charles  Lamb's  characterisation  of  Hazlitt, 
friendly  but  searching,  I  bring  my  task  to  its  close :  — 

"  From  the  other  gentleman  [Hazlitt]  I  neither  expect  nor 
desire  (as  he  is  well  assured)  any  such  concessions.  What 
hath  soured  him,  and  made  him  suspect  his  friends  of  infi- 
delity towards  him,  when  there  was  no  such  matter,  I  know 
not.  I  stood  well  with  him  for  fifteen  years  (the  proudest  of 
my  life),  and  have  ever  spoken  my  full  mind  of  him  to  some  to 
whom  his  panegyric  must  naturally  be  least  tasteful.  I  never 
in  thought  swerved  from  him ;  I  never  betrayed  him ;  I  never 
slackened  in  my  admiration  of  him ;  I  was  the  same  to  him 
(neither  better  nor  worse),  though  he  could  not  see  it,  as  in  the 
days  when  he  thought  fit  to  trust  me.  At  this  instant  he  may 
be  preparing  for  me  some  compliment  above  my  deserts,  as  he 
has  sprinkled  many  such  among  his  admirable  books,  for 
which  I  rest  his  debtor ;  or  for  anything  I  know  or  can  guess 
to  the  contrary,  he  may  be  about  to  read  a  lecture  on  my 
weaknesses.  He  is  welcome  to  them  (as  he  was  to  my  humble 
hearth)  if  they  can  divert  a  spleen  or  ventilate  a  fit  of  sullen- 
ness.  I  wish  he  would  not  quarrel  with  the  world  at  the 
rate  he  does ;  but  the  reconciliation  must  be  affected  by 
himself,  and  I  despair  of  living  to  see  that  day.  But  pro- 

1  "  Characters  should  never  be  given  by  an  historian  unless  he 
knew  the  people  whom  he  describes  or  copies  from  those  who  knew 
them."  — Dr.  Johnson,  see  Boswell  under  year  1779. — A  hard  saying 
for  picturesque  writers  of  history. 


234  WILLIAM  HAZLITT  [CHAP.  xi. 

testing  against  much  that  he  has  written  and  some  things 
which  he  chooses  to  do ;  judging  him  by  his  conversations, 
which  I  enjoyed  so  long  and  relished  so  deeply,  or  by  his 
books,  in  those  places  where  no  clouding  passion  intervenes, 
I  should  belie  my  own  conscience  if  I  said  less  than  that  I 
think  W.  H.  to  be  in  his  natural  and  healthy  state  one  of 
the  wisest  and  finest  spirits  breathing.  So  far  from  being 
ashamed  of  that  intimacy  which  was  betwixt  us,  it  is  my 
boast  that  I  was  able  for  so  many  years  to  have  preserved 
it  entire ;  and  I  think  I  shall  go  to  my  grave  without  finding, 
or  expecting  to  find,  such  another  companion." 1 

1  Letter  of  Elia  to  Southey.    First  printed  in  the  London  Maga- 
zine for  October  1823. 


INDEX 


Abingdon,  Mrs.,  134. 
Abstract  Ideas,  Essay,  73. 
Actors  and  Acting  (G.  H.  Lewes) , 

105. 

Akenside,  129,  132. 
Alexander  and  Campaspe  (John 

Lyly),133. 
All-Foxden,  48,  51. 
Alsager,  Mr.,  125. 
America,  The  Peace  with,  7-10. 
American  Rebels,  7. 
Ancient  Mariner  (Coleridge) ,  53. 
Angerstein  Gallery,  178. 
Antrim,  1,  2. 
Arbuthnot,  137,  184. 
Arcadia  (Sidney's),  131. 
Atlas,  The,  208. 

B 

Bagehot,  Walter,  57,  80,  129. 

Ball,  Sir  Alexander,  61. 

Bandon,  Cork,  7. 

Belsham,  31,  33. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  97,  115,  124, 

157, 196. 

Berkeley,  45,  92,  99, 100,  101, 199. 
"  Betty  Foy,"  49. 
Beyle,  M.,  191. 
Bible,  The,  137. 
Biographia  Literaria,  124. 
Blackwood,  Messrs.  William  and 

Sons,  168. 
Blackioood's  Magazine,  21,  158, 

164,  165-168,  177,  201. 
Blair,  131,  138,  168. 
Blenheim,  92. 
Boccaccio,  88,  89. 


Bodleian  Library,  92. 

Borne,  226. 

Boston,  11,  14,  15. 

Boswell,  120. 

Bourbons,  The,  96,  186,  219. 

Bridgewater,  48,  55. 

Bristol,  50,  55. 

Brougham,  Mr.,  160, 165, 171  note, 

197. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  122, 131. 
Bulwer,  Edward  Lytton,  73,  196. 
Burke,  Edmund,  33, 43,  54,  57,  80, 

132, 144,  147, 151,  179. 
Burleigh  House,  35,  62,  68. 
Burlington,  U.S.A.,  9. 
Burney,  Martin,  120,  223. 
Burneys,  The,  58. 
Burns,  Robert,  129,  172. 
Butler,  Bishop,  36,  45-46,  54,  92, 

99,  199;  Butler's  Sermons,  46, 

99,199. 
Byron,  139,  140, 196. 

C 

Caleb  Williams,  54. 

Camilla,  48. 

Campbell,  Thomas,  138,  144, 168, 

196,  212. 

Canning,  Mr.,  149, 160, 165. 
Cape  Cod,  14. 
Carlisle,  U.S.A.,  10. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  81, 115, 152, 185. 
Caryl's  Commentaries  on  Job,  22. 
Castle  Spectre  (Monk  Lewis) ,  50. 
Castlereagh,  Lord,  101, 127,  149, 

161,  165,  227. 

Causes  of  Methodism,  Essay,  112. 
Cavanagh,  John,  159-1(52,  207. 


235 


236 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 


Chalmers,  Dr.  Thomas,  172. 

Chalmers's  Poets,  210. 

Chambers's  Encyclopaedia  of 
English  Literature,  133. 

Champion,  The,  110. 

Chandler,  Dr.,  3. 

Character  of  Pitt,  77-79,  95,  113, 
151. 

Characteristics  (Hazlitt),  182- 
183. 

(Shaftesbury),  70. 

Characters  of  Shakespear's 
Plays,  110,  111,  113,  146. 

Chatham,  Earl  of,  80,  151. 

Chatterton,  128. 

Chaucer,  129. 

Chester,  John,  52,  54,  55. 

Child  Angel  (Charles  Lamb),  92. 

Christie,  Mr.  J.  H.,  166-168. 

Church  of  England,  27,  202. 

Clarke,  C.  Cowden,  213,  216. 

Claude,  74, 130. 

Clow,  Professor,  3. 

Cobbett,  William,  90,  160, 197. 

Colburn,  Henry,  163. 

Colburn's  Magazine,  196. 

Coleraine,  1. 

Coleridge,  Hartley,  66. 

Samuel  Taylor,  37,  38-55, 56- 

58,  61,  66,  77,  83,  95,  96,  98, 
99,  113,  122,  123,  126,  131,  141, 
142,  150,  160,  169  note,  196, 
198-201. 

Collins,  128,  129,  132,  211. 

"Complaint  of  a  Poor  Indian 
Woman,"  49. 

Comus,  Milton,  36. 

Condones  ad  Populum  (Cole- 
ridge), 141. 

Confederacy,  The,  134. 

Confessions  (Rousseau),  35. 

Congreve,  61,  133-134,  184. 

Conversations  of  James  North- 
cote,  180,  212-213. 

Copley,  13. 

Corehouse,  Lord  (Mr.  Cranston), 
172  note. 


Coriolanus,  105,  110,  113. 

Corporation  Acts,  21,  29. 

Coulson,  Mr.,  157. 

Country  Wife,  134. 

Covent  Garden  Theatre,  108. 

Cowper,  53,  73,  127,  129, 130. 

Crediton,  152. 

Criticisms  on  Art,  61-64,  67-69, 

70-72. 

Croker,  Mr.,  149,  161. 
Cumberland,  66,  71. 
"Cupid     and     my     Campaspe 

played,"  133. 

D 

Dante,  137, 191. 

Darling,  Dr.,  220. 

Darwin,  Dr.,  129. 

De  Foe,  4,  217 ;  Wilson's  Life  of, 

217. 

De  Quincey,  83, 196, 207,  227,  229. 
Diderot,  226. 

Dignum  (The  Singer) ,  26. 
"Don  Quixote,"  36, 117,  176. 
Donne,  122, 132. 
Dorchester,  U.S.A.,  14-15. 
Drummond  of  Hawthornden,  133. 
Drury  Lane    Theatre,    55,    108, 

109. 

Dryden,  132, 143  note,  210-211. 
Dyer,  George,  118. 

E 

Edinburgh,  171, 172,  173. 

Edinburgh  Review,  124,  144,  145, 
157, 160, 169  note,  171  note,  193, 
208,  217. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  99,  100,  181. 

Egotism,  Essay,  208  note. 

Elegy  (Gray's),  132. 

Elgin  marbles,  64. 

Elliston,  Mr.,  55. 

Eloquence  of  the  British  Senate, 
80,  95,  151. 

Encyclopedia  Britannica,  80. 

English  Students  at  Rome,  Es- 
say, 72. 


INDEX 


237 


Entrance  of  Christ  into  Jerusa- 
lem (Haydon),  50. 

Essays  of  Elia,  118,  165. 

Essays  on  the  Fine  Arts  (Rich- 
ardson), 62,  178, 179. 

Examiner,  The,  55  note,  104, 110, 
111,  113,  120,  169  note,  208,  216. 

Excursion  (Wordsworth) ,  120. 


Farquhar,  34,  133,  134. 

Fashion,  Essay  on,  117  note. 

Fawcett,  Joseph,  35-37,  77. 

Fielding,  36,  54,  61, 121. 

Fight,  The,  112-113,  119,  162-163, 
i?8. 

FitzGerald,  Edward,  211  note. 

Flaxman,  179,  217. 

Florence,  193-195. 

Fonblanque,  Mr.,  216-217. 

Foresight  (Congreve),  133-134. 

Forster,  John,  107,  195. 

Fortnightly  Review,  176-177. 

Fox,  Charles,  54,  65,  80,  151. 

France,  184, 185-188. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  6. 

Free  Thoughts  on  Public  Affairs, 
76,  77,  113. 

French  Revolution,  6,  32,  59,  88, 
96,  136,  139,  217-218. 

Friend,  The,  61,  141. 

Friends  and  Acquaintances  (Pat- 
more),  126,  223-224. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  192. 

G 

Garrick,  134. 

Gateacre,  69. 

Gay,  127, 132. 

Oebir  (Landor) ,  194. 

Gifford,  William,  74,  77, 113,  114, 

116, 143,  146-149,  151,  164,  168, 

196,  197,  227. 

Gil  Bias,  36,  67,  117,  122. 
Gilfillan,  George,  197. 
Glasgow,  171;  University  of,  3,41. 
Godwin,  43,  44,  58,  59,  92,  157. 


Godwins,  The,  4,  35,  39,  58. 

Goethe,  137. 

Goldsmith,  129. 

Gosse,  Edmund,  179,  180,  213. 

Gray,  54, 128, 129,  132,  211. 

H 

Hackney  Theological  College,  31, 
32,  77,  101. 

Hagley,  Miss,  26. 

Hamlet,  109, 110. 

Hare,  Julius,  195,  230. 

Harmer  Hill,  46. 

Hartleap  Well,  140. 

Hartley,  31,  199. 

Harvard,  U.S.A.,  11. 

Haydon,  40  note,  50, 116, 159note, 
176,  179. 

Hayley,  129. 

Hazlitt,  William,  his  name,  1 ; 
his  ancestry,  1,  2;  his  father, 
3;  birth  at  Maidstone,  6;  ac- 
companies the  family  to  Amer- 
ica, 7;  his  life  in  America, 
7-16 ;  return  to  England,  7-15 ; 
lives  with  the  family  in  Lon- 
don, 17-19 ;  removes  to  Wem  in 
Shropshire,  19;  his  education, 
19,  20,  21 ;  interest  in  theology 
and  politics,  21,  22,  23,  24 ;  visit 
to  Liverpool,  24-28;  studies 
French,  25;  first  visit  to  the 
theatre,  26 ;  he  enters  Hackney 
Theological  College,  30;  his 
studies  there,  30,  31,  32;  goes 
back  to  Wem,  32;  his  reading, 
33-35;  meets  Coleridge,  40; 
visit  to  Nether  Stowey,  48-55 ; 
resolves  to  become  a  painter, 62 ; 
goes  to  Paris  to  study  art,  62, 
63;  becomes  itinerant  portrait 
painter,  66;  abandons  paint- 
ing as  a  profession,  71 ;  his  first 
book,  Essay  in  Defence  of  the 
Natural  Disinterestedness  of 
the  Human  Mind,  73;  Free 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 


Thoughts  on  Public  Affairs, 
76;  abridgment  of  Tucker's 
Light  of  Nature,  79 ;  The  Elo- 
quence of  the  British  Senate, 
80;  Reply  to  the  Essay  on 
Population  by  the  Rev.  T.  R. 
Malthus,  81;  his  marriage,  86, 
115-117;  goes  to  Winterslow, 
90;  writes  "A  New  and  Im- 
proved "  English  Grammar, 
90;  Memoirs  of  Holcroft,  92; 
birth  of  a  son,  92;  returns  to 
London,  94;  his  friends  and 
acquaintances,  95, 117-121 ;  lec- 
tures on  Modern  Philosophy, 
98;  becomes  a  reporter  in  the 
Gallery  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, 101;  alcoholic  excess 
and  total  abstinence,  101,  222: 
becomes  a  dramatic  critic, 
104  ;  Characters  of  Shake- 
spear's  Plays,  110;  View  of 
the  English  Stage,  125 ;  Round 
Table,  111,  112;  lectures  at  the 
Surrey  Institution,  125-142; 
Letter  to  William  Gifford,  146- 
149;  Table-Talk,  163;  contrib- 
utes to  the  London  Magazine, 
165;  divorce,  169-174;  lectures 
in  Glasgow,  171 ;  the  Miss 
Walker  episode,  173-178;  Liber 
Amoris,  176,  177.  178 ;  Charac- 
teristics, 181-183;  second  mar- 
riage,183;  visit  to  the  Continent, 
184 ;  Notes  of  a  Journey  through 
France  and  Italy,  184;  return 
to  England,  195;  Spirit  of  the 
Age,  196;  Life  of  Napoleon, 
207;  The  Plain  Speaker,  208; 
Hazlitt's  Select  Poets,  210; 
Conversations  of  James  North- 
cote,  212  ;  his  death,  220  ; 
personal  traits,  221-224 ;  his 
fondness  of  rackets  and  fives, 
159-162;  his  income,  124,  125, 
208,  216,  220;  his  character 
and  genius,  226-234 ;  his  aver- 


sions, 227-230;  his   frankness, 
231 ;  his  political  opinions,  29- 

32,  95,  140,  193-194,  227,  228; 
philosophical  speculation,   30, 
32,56,  61,  73-76,  92,  98-101,227, 
228;    his   qualifications   as    a 
dramatic  critic,  105-111 ;  as  an 
essayist,  111,  112 ;  as  a  critic  of 
poetry,  130-142 ;  as  an  art  critic 
178,   179,  180;    permanence  of 
his  influence,  145,  146. 

Hazlitt,   William    (Hazlitt's   fa- 
ther), 2-16,  17,  19-24,  25-27, 31, 

33,  41,  42,  43,  56,  65,  69,  70 , 71, 
73,  83,  95,  151-154. 

Mrs.  Grace  (his  mother),  5, 

7, 15,  35,  151-154,  173,  174,  219, 

220,  224. 

John  (his  grandfather)  ,1,2. 

Mrs.  Margaret  (his  grand- 
mother), 1-3,41. 

Colonel  John  (his  uncle),  2, 10. 

James  (his  uncle) ,  2,  3. 

John  (his  brother),  6,  7,  10, 

12-15,  18-21,  32,  35,  57,  71,  83, 

87,  95,  225. 

Loftus  (his  brother) ,  6. 

Margaret  (his  sister) ,  6-9, 10, 

11,  12,  13,    15,    18-21,  151-154, 

173,  224. 

Harriet  (his  sister) ,  7. 

Esther  (his  sister) ,  8. 

Mrs.   (ne'e  Sarah   Stoddart, 

his  first  wife) ,  58,  Gl,  86-90, 91- 

93,  115-117,  124,  151,  169,  170- 

174, 183, 186,  219. 
Mrs.  (nee  Mrs.  Bridgewater, 

his  second  wife),  183,  184,  186, 

1R5. 
William  (his  son),  1,  92-93, 

116,  117,  150,  151,  169,  173,  178, 

186,  195,  212,  219,  220. 
,   John    (his   younger   son), 

117. 
W.  Carew  (his  grandson),!, 

3,  56,  69  note,  84,  117,  178, 195, 

221,  224. 


INDEX 


239 


Hazlitt's  Select  Poets,  210-211. 

Head  of  the  Old  Woman  (paint- 
ing), 67-459. 

Heine,  226,  229. 

Herrick,  133. 

Hessey,  Mr.,  220. 

Hingham,  U.S.A.,  12-15. 

Hinton,  Mr.,  153. 

History  of  the  Court  of  Chancery 
(Joseph  Parkes) ,  119. 

Hobbes,  29,  75,  92,  99. 

Holcroft,  Thomas,  35,  58,  92,  123. 

Mrs.,  92. 

Holcrofts,  The,  58. 

Holy  Alliance,  88,  96. 

Homer,  136,  137. 

Hood,  196. 

Hook,  196. 

Hoppner,  Mr.,  149. 

Home,  Mr.  R.H.,  220, 221. 

Hours  in  a  Library  (Leslie 
Stephen),  74,  207. 

House  of  Commons,  101-104. 

Hume,  David,  45, 179. 

Hume,  Joseph,  84. 

Humphry  Clinker,  36. 

Hunt,  John,  150,   158,   177,  232. 

Henry  Leigh,  157. 

Leigh,  95,  111,  112,  124,  125, 

148,  151, 156-158, 166,  210. 

Hunt  and  Cowden  Clarke,  184, 
213,  218. 


Imaginary  Conversations  (Lan- 

dor),193,195. 

Indian  Jugglers,  Essay,  159-163. 
Ireland,  Mr.  Alexander,  73. 
Italy,  188-195. 


"Jacob's Ladder"  (painting), 91. 
Jeffrey,  124,  157, 177,  220. 
John  Buncle,  112, 121,  178. 
Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  33  note,  45, 

54,  58,  100,  101,  121,  125,  127- 

130,  222,  224,  233  note. 


Johnson,  Mr.  (publisher),  73,  80. 
Jonson,  Ben,  133,  226. 
Jordan,  Mrs.,  74,  134. 
Julia  de  Roubignd  (Mackenzie) , 

71. 
Junius,  54,  122,  160. 

K 

Kean,  Edmund,  107-110,  223. 

Keats,  128, 131. 

Kemble,  26,  105,  109,  110, 149. 

Keswick,  67. 

Kippis,  Dr.,  6. 

Knowledge  of  Character,  Essays, 

175. 
Knowles,  Sheridan,  174, 176, 177. 


La  Rochefoucauld,  182. 

Lalla  Rookh,  139. 

Lamb,  Mary,  86,  87, 88, 90,  91,  93, 

117,  120. 
Lamb.Charles,  27, 57, 58, 71, 83-86, 

88,    90-92,    93,    94,    107,    117, 

120-123,  124,  131,  133,  157,  158, 

159,  165,  198,  207,  210,  216,  217, 

219,  220,  228,  233,  234. 
Lamb  and  Hazlitt   (W.   Carew 

Hazlitt),84,  91. 
L' Amour  (M.  Beyle),  191. 
Lana,  65. 
Landor,  33,  96,  97,  107,  133,  140, 

193-195, 226, 230 ;  Forster's  Life 

of  Landor,  195. 
Lay  of  the  Laureate  (Southey), 

104. 
Lectures  on  the  English  Poets, 

126,  143, 146. 

on  the  English  Comic  Writ- 
ers, 126. 
on  the  Dramatic  Literature 

of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth,  126, 

133. 
on  the  Rise  and  Progress  of 

Modern  Philosophy,  98. 
on  the  Law  of  Nature  and 

Nations  (Mackintosh),  59-60. 


240 


WILLIAM  HAZLITT 


Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord  (Burke), 

33,34. 
Letter  to  William  Gifford,  Esq., 

114,  140-150. 
Lewes,  G.  H.  105, 109. 
Lewis,  Mr.  David,  17. 

Mouk,  50. 

Liber  Amoris,  169,  171,  173-178, 

230,231. 

Liberal,  The,  55  note,  172. 
Liberty  and  Necessity,  Lecture, 

99,100. 
Light  of  Nature  pursued 

(Tucker),  79, 181. 
Listen,  106. 
Literary    Remains    (Hazlitt's), 

30,     55     note,     98,     126-128, 

221. 

Studies  (Bagehot),  129. 

Liverpool,  2-1-27. 

Lord,  227. 

Llangollen  Vale,  47. 
Locke,  92,  99,  184, 194. 
Lockhart,  166-168 ;  Lang's  Life  of 

Lockhart,  167  note,  168. 
Loftus,    Mrs.    (Hazlitt's  grand- 
mother), 5,  18,224. 
London,  15, 17-19, 31, 32, 57, 58, 86, 

94,  95, 98,  115-117,  187, 188, 189, 

196,  208, 217, 219. 
Magazine,  120,  164,  165, 178, 

208,  233,  234. 

Weekly  Revieio,  208. 

Longmans,  Messrs.,  83. 

Lorraine,  Claude,  91. 

Louvre,  The,  56-72,  185,  186,  189, 

192. 
Love  for  Love,  134. 

in  Many  Masks,  26. 

Lowe,  Sir  Hudson,  116. 

Lyly,  John,  133. 

Lyrical  Ballads,  48,  53,  57. 

M 

Macaulay,  4, 19, 124, 191. 
Macbeth,  109,  110. 


Mackenzie,  71. 

Mackintosh,  Sir  Jaines,  43, 58-60, 

73,  74,  80,  165. 
Mad  Mother,  49. 
Madonna  Pia,  story  of,  191, 192. 
Maidstone,  6. 
Malta,  60. 
Malthus,  Rev.  T.  R.,  81-83,  90, 

184,  196. 
Man   of    Feeling    (Mackenzie), 

71. 

Manchester,  67. 
Manning,  87. 
Marriage  laws  of  England  and 

Scotland,  170, 171. 
Marshfield,  Gloucestershire,  5. 
Martineau,  Dr.,  24. 
Marvell,  132,  210. 
Medwin,  Captain,  206. 
Memoirs    of    William    Hazlitt, 

6,     117,     154,      156-158,      159 

note. 

Merry  England,  Essay,  206. 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  110. 
"  Millamant,"  134. 
Miller,  Mr.  John,  73. 
Milton,  36,    54,  74,  90,   97,    98, 

115,    122,    126,    128,    130,   132, 

171,    228;    Milton's    Sonnets, 

97. 

Mr.  H (Lamb),  84,  86. 

Monody    to    Chatterton    (Cole- 
ridge), 38, 198. 
Montagu,  Basil,  158,  220. 
Montaigne,  112. 
Moor,  Dr.,  3. 
Moore,  Tom,  138. 
Moral  and  Political  Philosophy 

(Paley),  47. 

More,  Hannah,  127, 129. 
Morning  Chronicle,  103,  104,  109, 

110,  126,  184,  208. 
Morning  Post,  77. 
Mounsey,  George,  118, 119. 
Munden,  134. 
Murray,  Lindley,  90. 
Murray,  John,  149,  164. 


INDEX 


241 


N 

Napier :  Selection  from  the  Corre- 
spondence of  Macvey  Napier, 

227  note. 
Napoleon  Bonaparte,  65,  96,  106, 

111,  116,  125,  131,  139,  182, 185, 

186,  194, 229,  230 ;  Hazlitt's  Life 

of  Napoleon,  159,  196,  206,  207, 

211,  213-219. 
Natural  Disinterestedness  of  the 

Human  Mind,  46, 56, 58,  73,  74- 

76. 

Nether  Stowey,  48-55. 
New  and  Improved  Grammar  of 

the  English  Tongue,  90. 
New  Elolse  (Rousseau) ,  35. 
New  Monthly  Magazine,  162, 208, 

211. 
New  School  of  Reform,  Essay,  26 

note,  208  note. 
New  Times,  166. 
New  York,  8-9. 
Newman,  John  Henry,  81, 136. 
No  Song,  no  Supper  (play),  26. 
Northcote,  James,  62,  116,  121, 

179,  212,  213. 
Notes    of    a    Journey    through 

France  and  Italy,  181,  184-193. 

O 

Ode  to  the  Departing  Tear  (Cole- 
ridge), 38. 

On  a  Landscape  by  Foussin,  163. 

On  Actors  and  Acting,  107,  108. 

On  Consistency  of  Opinion,  31, 32. 

On  Court  Influence,  22,  23,  24. 

On  going  a  Journey,  163. 

On  Patronage  and  Puffing ,96,163. 

On  reading  Old  Books,  71. 

On  the  Conduct  of  Life,  212. 

On  the  Conversation  of  Authors, 
121-124, 208  note. 

Onthe  Difference  betweenWriting 
and  Speaking,  102, 103, 208, 209. 

OntheFearofDeath,  154, 163, 177. 

On  the  Feeling  of  Immortality  in 
Youth,  28,  29. 

K 


On  the  Ignorance  of  the  Learned, 
162. 

On  the  Pleasures  of  Painting,  61, 
62,  63,  64,  67,  71. 

On  the  Political  State  of  Man,  30, 
31. 

On  the  Principles  of  Human 
Action.  See  Natural  Disinter- 
estedness of  the  Human  Mind. 

On  the  Tendency  of  Sects,  24, 112. 

Orleans  Gallery,  61,  62. 

Ossian,  137,  139. 

Othello,  109, 110. 

Oxford,  91, 188. 

in  the  Vacation  (Lamb),  92. 


Paine,  Thomas,  45. 

Paley,  46, 118. 

Palmer,  Jack,  106. 

Paradise  Lost,  36,  97,  122. 

Paradise  Regained,  122. 

Paradox  and  Commonplace,  Es- 
say, 154, 155, 156. 

Paris,  61-65,  185-188,  194. 

Parkes,  Joseph,  119. 

Pastoral  Ballad  (Snenstone) ,  36. 

Patmore,  P.  G.,  125,  126,  164, 167, 
168, 174, 177,  178,  220,  223,  224. 

Paul  and  Virginia,  48. 

People  with  one  Idea,  Essay, 
130. 

Peregrine  Pickle,  34, 185. 

Perry,  Mr.,  103,  104, 125. 

Sir  Erskine,  103. 

Perry,  Miss,  103. 

Persons  one  would  wish  to  have 
seen,  Essay,  120. 

Peter  Bell  (Wordsworth),  51. 

"Peter  Martyr"  (Titian),  179. 

Peterborough,  5. 

Philadelphia,  9, 10. 

Piggott,  Robert,  119. 

Pitt,  William,  5, 54,  58, 77-79, 151, 
182,  227. 

Pleasures  of  Memory  (Rogers), 
138. 


242 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 


Plain  Speaker,  The,  26  note,  102, 

103,  121-124, 165,  208,  209. 
Plunkett,  103,  165. 

Poems  on  the  Naming  of  Placet 

(Wordsworth) ,  48. 
Political  Essays,  22,  23,  24,  80, 

104,  130,  140,  150,  196. 
Ponsonby,  165. 

Pope,  54,  128,  132,  137. 

Person,  118, 119. 

Posthumous  Fame,  Essay,  112. 

Poussin,  64,  66. 

Presbyterianism,  English,  4. 

Price,  Dr.,  3,  7,  31. 

Priestley,  Dr.,  6, 11,25,29,  33, 100, 
199. 

Prior,  Dr.,  3. 

Matthew,  132. 

Procter,  175,  176,  210,  220,  223; 
Charles  Lamb,  101  note;  Auto- 
biographical Fragments,  176. 

Provoked  Husband,  62. 

Provoked  Wife,  134. 

Q 

Quarterly  Review,  77, 104, 113, 120, 
143,  147,  151,  160,  164,  169. 

R 

Railton,  Miss,  71. 

Raphael,  62,  66,  70, 189. 

Recruiting  Officer  (Farquhar)  34. 

Rees,  Dr.,  31. 

Relapse,  The,  134. 

Religious  Musings  (Coleridge), 
200. 

Rembrandt,  21,  35,  62,  66,  68,  70, 
178. 

Remorse  (Coleridge),  55. 

Reply  to  the  Essay  on  Popula- 
tion, 81,  83,  95. 

Repository,  The,  153,  154. 

Reynell,  Mr.,  219. 

Miss,  219. 

Reynolds,  Mr.,  157. 

Sir  Joshua,  18,  58,  68,  179. 

Richard  the  Third,  109, 110. 


Richardson,  34,  35,  54. 

Rickmanns,  The,  58. 

Rise  and  Progress   of   Modern 

Philosophy  Lectures,  98-101. 
Road  to  Ruin  (Holcrof  t) ,  92. 
Robinson,  Crabb,  57,  92. 
Rogers,  Samuel,  138. 
Rome,  188-192. 
Romeo,  110. 

Romilly,  Sir  Samuel,  165. 
Round  Table,  24,  77-79,  104, 112, 

113, 120,  129, 146, 148, 149. 
Rousseau,  8,  25,  35,  184,  213,  229. 
Rowe,  Mr.  (Unitarian  minister), 

38. 

Rubens,  64,  178. 
Ruskin,  202. 


St.  Andrew's  Church,   Holborn, 

86. 

St.  Anne's,  Soho,  220,  221. 
St.  James's  Chronicle,  33. 
St.  Peter's,  Rome,  190, 191. 
Salisbury,  58, 90. 
Salisbury  Plain,  90,  130. 
School  for  Scandal,  106. 
Scott,  John,  166-168. 
Sir  Walter,  52,  74,  140,  143, 

196,  201-205,  207,  214,  215,  217. 
Scott,  Racine,  and  Shakespeare, 

Essay,  204,  205. 
Seasons  (Thomson's),  53. 
Select  Discourses  (William  Haz- 

litt  the  elder),  28,  73. 
Shaftesbury,  70. 
Shakespeare,  54,  65,  98,  106,  107, 

110,  111,  126,  128,  133,  136,  171, 

232 ;  Satinets,  65. 
Shelburne,  Lord,  7. 
Shelley,  154, 155,  156,  158. 
Shenstone,  36. 

Shepherd,  Dr.,  69;   Sally  Shep- 
herd, 69. 
Sheridan,  135. 

Short  Studies  (Froude) ,  192. 
Shrewsbury,  33,  34,  38,  39,  44-46. 


INDEX 


243 


Shrouell,  2. 

"Shy  lock,"  109. 

Siddons,  Mrs.,  8,  74, 106,  130,  213. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  46,  122,  131. 

Sienua,  192. 

"  Sir  John  Brute,"  134. 

Skeffington,  Sir  George,  70. 

Sketches  and  Essays,  105  note, 

117  note 
Smith,  Adam,  3. 

Mr.  Horatio,  167. 

Mr.  D.  Nicol,  168. 

Smollett,  121,  122. 

Soho,  219,  220. 

Some  Remarks  on  the  Systems  of 

Hartley  and  Helvetius,  58,  73. 
South,  45. 

Southampton     Buildings,     Hoi- 
born,  174,  175. 

Southampton  Coffee  House,  118. 
Southey,  50,  66,  74,  96,  104,  120, 

129,  131,  143,  149,  150,  151,  159, 

194, 195, 196,  229,  230. 
Spenser,  129, 191. 
Spirit  of  Obligations,  Essay,  208 

note. 
Spirit  of  the  Age,  59, 60, 114,  115, 

129,  147,  148,  196,  204. 
Stamford,  171, 174. 
Stephen,  Mr.  Leslie,  74,  207. 
Sterne,  36,  117. 

Stevenson,  R.  L.,  208  note,  230. 
Stoddart,  Dr.  John,  58, 60, 61,  87, 

90, 166, 167,  187. 
Stonehenge,  90, 183. 
Stuarts,  The,  191,  202. 
Suckling,  133. 
Suett,  the  actor,  26. 
Surrey  Institution,  125. 
Swift,  128,  131,  132,  227. 
Sybilline  Leaves,  49. 


Table-Talk,  154-156, 159-162, 163, 

164,  175,  177,  208. 
Talfourd,  Mr.  Justice,  96,  107, 

126-128,  134,  217,  221-223. 


Taylor  and  Hessey,  186. 
Taylor,  Jeremy,  54,  74,  131. 
Teiemaque,  25. 
Tennyson,  163. 
Test  Act,  21,  25,  29. 
Thackeray,  103. 

The  Free  Admission,  Essay,  219. 
"  The  Fudge  Family,"  138. 
The  Sick  Chamber,  Essay,  219. 
The     Sublime     and    Beautiful 

(Burke),  179. 
Thomson,  James,  53, 172. 
Thorn,  49. 
Tierney,  165. 
Times,  The,  125. 
Tintoret,  66. 
Tipperary,  1,  2. 
Titian,  8,  13,  62,  63,  64,  65,  91, 

130,  179,  213. 
Tom  Jones,  34,  47. 
Tooke,  Home,  90,  197,  226,  227. 
Toulmin,  Dr.,  55. 
Tracys,  The,  of  Liverpool,  24,  25, 

27,  28,  73. 
Traill,  Mr.,  167. 

Tucker,  Abraham,  79,  80,  95, 181. 
Tuileries,  188. 

U 
Unitarianism,  3,  4,  10,  11,  24,  30, 

31,33. 
United  States  of  America,  7-16. 


Vanbrugh,  133-135,  184. 

Vandyke,  74,  178. 

Vevey,  206. 

View  of  the  English  Stage,  104, 

107-111,  125. 

Viny,  Mr.,  of  Tenterden,  6. 
Virgil,  53. 

W 

Walker,  Miss,  169, 170, 174-177. 
Walter,  Mr.,  of  the  Times,  125. 
Walthamstow,  35. 
Wai  worth,  17-18. 
Warton's  Sonnets,  65, 131. 


244 


WILLIAM   HAZLITT 


Washington,  General,  10. 

Watchman,  The,  38,  141. 

Waterloo,  96. 

Waverley  Novels,  74,  140,  184, 
202-205. 

Way  of  the  World  (Congreve), 
134. 

Wedgwood,  Thomas,  43,  44. 

Wells,  Mr.,  220. 

Wem,  8,  17-37,  39,  46,  56,  57,  83, 
95,  151,  152. 

Werther,  139. 

Wesley,  John,  90. 

Weymouth,  U.S.A.,  11-14. 

Whitbread,  165. 

White,  Mr.,  220. 

Why  Distant  Objects  Please,  Es- 
say, 17,  18. 

Wiche,  Mr.,  6. 

Wilberforce,  165. 

Williams,  Mrs.,  the  actress,  26. 

Wilson,  Professor,  21, 164. 

Effingham,  217. 


Walter,  217. 

Winterslow,  19, 58, 87,  90-93, 152, 

183,  196,  208,  211;    Winterslow, 

Essays,  28,  29,  31.  32,  55  note, 

152. 

Wisbeach,  5,  35. 
Wither,  133. 
Wollstonecrafts,  The,  58;   Mrs. 

Wollstonecraft,  35. 
Wordsworth,  Dorothy,  66. 
William,  37,  43,  48-51,  53, 

56,  57,  61,  66,  96,  97,  120,  132, 

140,  154,  160,  172,  179,  194,  196, 

210,  229,  230. 
Wycherley,  133-135. 


Yates,  Mr.,  25,  28. 

Yellow  Dwarf  (Leigh  Hunt),  124, 

151. 
York   Street,  Westminster,   97, 

115, 116, 126,  170. 
Young,  128, 129, 132,  211. 


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